The Biden-Harris campaign released their 30-second ad — titled “Hope” — early Tuesday morning, slamming the former president over his stance on abortion and his role in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“In 2016, Donald Trump ran to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, in 2024, he’s running to pass a national ban on a woman’s right to choose. I’m running to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again. So women have a federal guarantee to the right to choose. Donald Trump doesn’t trust women. I do,” Biden says in his short ad, following a clip of Trump saying he is “proud” to have ended the nearly 50-year-old law.

Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign, meanwhile turned its attention to immigration, taking a full minute to showcase a series of violent crime victims allegedly harmed by a so-called illegal immigrant.

“Stop Biden’s border bloodbath,” the ad reads before a series of news clips, each describing a crime allegedly committed by a migrant. “Stop Biden’s border bloodbath,” it reads again.

Michiganders have felt the tragic consequences of Biden's Border Bloodbath.

President Trump will end it on Day One. pic.twitter.com/KHilsUnrz1

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) April 2, 2024

Both campaigns hammered home their points with later statements.

Trump’s team shared a lengthy list of crime victims along with a short statement from the former president. Biden, the campaign said, “has launched an invasion of our country — resettling dangerous illegal aliens from all over the world into American communities to prey on our people and endanger our citizens.”

“Under Biden, we now have a new category of crime, it’s called Migrant Crime,” Trump said.

Biden’s campaign held a press call Tuesday afternoon to highlight a court ruling out of Florida which will allow a six-week abortion ban to go into effect next month. Trump, the Biden campaign said, is of the same mind.

“Make no mistake, Donald Trump will do everything in his power to try and enact a national abortion ban if he’s reelected. In the last few months alone, Trump has doubled down on his support for a national abortion ban – and his allies have plans for him to do it with or without the help of Congress,” Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said.

Biden leads former President Donald Trump by just two points — 44% to 42% — according to a Morning Consult poll of more than 6,000 registered voters released Tuesday, but only if they’re the only candidates on the ballot.

“The presumptive Republican nominee has rarely led Biden since the Super Tuesday primary contests, compared with consistent advantages he enjoyed throughout January and February. However, the race remains incredibly close, with 8% of voters threatening to vote third party and 5% undecided,” pollsters wrote.

Biden, according to the poll, is more popular than Trump for the first time since the start of the year, with the 46th President’s net favorability 6 points into the negative and the 45th President 8 points under water.

“This edge comes as Biden’s advantage over Trump on net buzz — the share of voters who heard something positive about each candidate minus the share who heard something negative — ticked up to 21 points, which is the largest margin since mid-November,” pollsters wrote.

The survey also shows that Republicans, as a whole, do better among those surveyed when it comes to the economy, national security, and immigration, while Democrats outperform regarding health care, entitlement programs, climate change, reproductive rights and abortion. The economy is top of mind among surveyed voters, according to pollsters.

“The economy remains voters’ top issue for the 2024 elections. And though the share who said it’s ‘very important’ in deciding their vote dropped during much of 2023, the economy’s salience has ticked back up in recent months,” they wrote.

The slight edge shown for the incumbent president in Tuesday’s poll matches a Quinnipiac University survey of 1,407 registered voters released last week, which shows Biden up by 3 points. That’s in line with polls put out by the university in February.

However, the same Quinnipiac poll once again showed that if voters are offered the chance to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, they pull enough of the vote to potentially give Trump the edge.

“Way too close to call on the head-to-head and even closer when third party candidates are counted. The backstretch is months away and this is about as close as it can get,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said with the release of that poll.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump accused President Joe Biden of unleashing a “bloodbath” at the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday, escalating his inflammatory rhetoric as he campaigned in two midwestern swing states likely to be critical to the outcome of the 2024 election.

Trump, who has accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to launch the largest domestic deportation operation in the nation’s history if he wins a second term, accused Biden of allowing a “bloodbath” that was “destroying the country.” In Michigan, he referred to immigrants in the U.S. illegally suspected of committing crimes as “animals,” using dehumanizing language that those who study extremism have warned increases the risk of violence.

“Under Crooked Joe Biden, every state is now a border state. Every town is now a border town because Joe Biden has brought the carnage and chaos and killing from all over world and dumped it straight into our backyards,” Trump said in Grand Rapids, where he stood flanked by law enforcement officers in uniform before a line of flags.

While violent crime is down, Trump and other Republicans have seized on several high-profile crimes alleged to have been committed by immigrants in the U.S. illegally to attack Biden as border crossings have hit record highs. Polls suggest Trump has an advantage over Biden on issues as many prospective voters say they’re concerned about the impact of the crossings.

Trump continued to hammer the theme at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Tuesday evening as the state was holding its presidential primaries. Trump accused rogue nations of “pumping migrants across our wide open border,” and “sending prisoners, murders, drug dealers, mental patients, terrorists” — though there is no evidence any country is engaged in that kind of coordinated effort.

He also claimed that migrants would cost the country trillions of dollars in public benefits and cause Social Security and Medicare to “buckle and collapse.”

“If you want to help Joe Biden wheel granny off the cliff to fund government benefits for illegals, then vote for Crooked Joe Biden,” he said. “But when I am president, instead of throwing granny overboard, I will send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home.”

On Tuesday, the White House emphasized that immigration is a positive for the U.S. economy. They argued that recent gains in immigration have helped to boost employment and sustained growth as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to bring down inflation.

“We know immigrants strengthen our country and also strengthen our economy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Tuesday’s briefing, noting that immigrants were the ones doing the “critical work” on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore when it collapsed after being struck by a ship.

Trump on Tuesday focused on the killing of Ruby Garcia, a Michigan woman who was found dead on the side of a Grand Rapids highway on March 22. Police say she was in a romantic relationship with the suspect, Brandon Ortiz-Vite. He told police he shot her multiple times during an argument before dropping her body on the side of the road and driving off in her red Mazda.

Trump incorrectly referred to the 25-year-old Garcia as a 17-year-old.

Authorities say Ortiz-Vite is a citizen of Mexico and had previously been deported following a drunken driving arrest. He does not have an attorney listed in court records.

Trump in his remarks said that he had spoken to some of her family. Garcia’s sister, Mavi, however, disputed his account, telling FOX 17 that they had not. “No, he did not speak with us,” the outlet said she told them in a text message, declining to comment further.

She also pleaded on Facebook last week for reporters to stop politicizing her sister’s story, and on Tuesday asked for privacy, saying she only wanted “justice to be served” and to “be left alone.”

Trump also again mentioned the killing of Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia. A Venezuelan man whom officials say entered the U.S. illegally has been charged. Riley’s family attended Trump’s rally in Georgia last month and met with him backstage.

Trump referred to the suspect in Riley’s death as an “illegal alien animal.”

“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals,’” he said.

FBI statistics show overall violent crime dropped again in the U.S. last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike. In Michigan, violent crime hit a three-year low in 2022, according to the most recent available data. Crime in Michigan’s largest city, Detroit, is also down, with the fewest homicides last year since 1966.

Top Republicans from across Michigan had packed into a conference room in downtown Grand Rapids to hear Trump speak in a county he won in 2016 but lost to Biden in 2020. Outside the event center, over 100 supporters stood in the cold rain to line the street where Trump’s motorcade was expected to pass.

At a nearby park, a small group advocating for immigration reform gathered to hold a moment of silence for Garcia while holding signs that read “No human being is illegal” and “Michigan welcomes immigrants.”

In Green Bay, some supporters braved snowfall for three hours outside to enter the venue.

“Tomorrow, Donald Trump is coming to Grand Rapids where he is expected to once again try to politicize a tragedy and sow hate and division to hide from his own record of failing Michiganders,” said Alyssa Bradley, the Biden campaign’s Michigan communications director.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said Monday that there is “a real problem on our southern border” and that it’s “really critical that Congress and the president solve the problem.”

“There was a solution on the table. It was actually the former president that encouraged Republicans to walk away from getting it done,” Whitmer said. “I don’t have a lot of tolerance for political points when it continues to endanger our economy and, to some extent, our people as we saw play out in Grand Rapids recently.”

Trump has been leaning into inflammatory rhetoric about the surge of migrants at the southern border. He has portrayed migrants as “poisoning the blood of the country,” questioned whether some should even be considered people, and claimed, without evidence, that countries have been emptying their prisons and mental asylums into the U.S.

He has also accused Biden and the Democrats of trying to “collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”

In Green Bay, Trump spoke beside an empty podium that read, “Anytime. Anywhere. Anyplace.” Trump said it was meant for Biden, whose campaign has not committed to participating in debates.

Gomez Licon reported from Green Bay, Wis. Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Voters in four states weighed in Tuesday on their parties’ presidential nominees, a largely symbolic vote now that both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have locked up the Democratic and Republican nominations.

Biden and Trump easily won primaries in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin, adding to their delegate hauls for their party conventions this summer.

Their victories, while hardly surprising, nevertheless offer clues about enthusiasm among base voters for the upcoming 2020 rematch that has left a majority of Americans underwhelmed. Biden has faced opposition from activists encouraging Democrats to vote against him to send a message of disapproval for his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, and some Republican Trump critics are still voting for rivals who have dropped out.

“Uncommitted” in Rhode Island and Connecticut was getting a similar share of the Democratic vote as protest campaigns in Minnesota and Michigan, which got 19% and 13% respectively.

In particular, the tallies in Wisconsin, a pivotal November battleground, will give hints about the share of Republicans who still aren’t on board with Trump and how many Democrats are disillusioned with Biden. Trump campaigned Tuesday in Wisconsin and Michigan, two Midwest battlegrounds.

“Donald Trump is the first person I can remember who actually tried to keep all of the promises that he made during the campaign,” said Scott Lindemann, a 62-year-old contractor in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who voted for the former president in the GOP primary. “I was very impressed with that.”

In New York, 70-year-old Steve Wheatley, a registered Republican, said he wishes there were more candidates to choose from. He said he voted for Nikki Haley even though “she has no shot” because of the lack of options.

“We need younger candidates with fresh ideas to run for president,” said Wheatley, a resident of Athens, a small town in the Hudson Valley. “I prefer a Democrat but our choices are thin. Look at what Biden has done so far with the economy.”

Theresa Laabs, a 55-year-old cashier in Kenosha, said her family is feeling the squeeze from higher food and gasoline prices, but she voted for Biden in the Democratic primary because she feels like he’s working to alleviate inflation.

“I understand it’s the economy now, and I’m hoping that Joe will keep working even harder in the next four years to try and bring these things down and make it easier for the working family,” Laabs said.

Trump and Biden turned their attention to the general election weeks ago after Haley dropped out of the GOP contest. Biden visited all the top battlegrounds last month after his State of the Union speech.

Trump is looking to one-up his rival with a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida, this weekend that he hopes will bring in $33 million.

With the presidential candidates locking up their parties’ nominations, turnout was slow in Rhode Island, where only 4% of eligible voters had cast ballots by 5 p.m., a figure that included Tuesday’s in-person votes as well as mail-in and early votes.

It was slow across the border in Connecticut as well, where early voting was held for the first time in state history. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said turnout was only 1% to 2% in some communities by 11 a.m., while it was 4% in Stamford, one of the state’s larger cities. “What we have been hearing on the ground from people over the last few weeks is that this isn’t a competitive primary,” she said about the low numbers.

Cooper reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, and Maysoon Khan in Athens, New York contributed.

WASHINGTON — They’re weighed down by student debt. They’re shut out of the housing market. They’re hit by higher costs of living. And they want President Joe Biden to listen.

At a time when Donald Trump is cutting into Biden’s 2020 advantage with young adults, the growing list of grievances among those between the ages of 18 to 29 is a worrying sign for Biden as he seeks a second term.

People in that age cohort are more than twice as likely to cite the economy as their top concern compared with older adults in recent Gallup data. And while all voters are more worried about the economy now than they were heading into the 2020 presidential election, the pessimism has spiked the most among those under 30.

That concern is being reflected in polls. Trump is currently leading the president 47% to 40% with voters aged 18 to 34 in swing states, according to a March Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll. By contrast, Biden won 61% of voters under 30 last cycle.

Though the November election is months off and attitudes can shift, there’s no doubt Biden will need support from Generation Z and Millennial voters to win.

Incumbents get the blame when voters are dissatisfied with the economy. The challenge for Biden is that even though economic growth has been solid in the past year, the job market is robust and the inflation rate is cooling, polls after polls show many people don’t feel like it.

Younger Americans have a long list of headwinds: stunted action on student-loan forgiveness, the highest interest rates since they’ve been in diapers and expensive rents.

Older Americans, who are more likely to live in houses they own with low mortgage rates and who have benefited from years of housing and stock market appreciation, are less pessimistic about the economy. The contrasting way generations emerged financially from the coronavirus pandemic may provide a playbook for Biden on how to hone his political message to young adults.

Christian Martin, a 22-year-old college senior from Atlanta, said he hasn’t yet felt the impact of Biden’s economic policies. He’s worried about making student-loan payments after he graduates while keeping up with the elevated costs of living.

“If Biden can address the issues that the youth are feeling, then the turnout can be stronger than what it’s projected to be,” he said in an interview. “This is Biden’s chance to hear what we have to say, because that’s essentially all it is, you know, unfulfilled promises.”

Biden’s plan to forgive billions of dollars in student debt was struck down last year by the Supreme Court, which rejected one of his signature initiatives as exceeding his power.

“The President is fighting to lower costs for young Americans — forgiving student debt, lowering health and eliminating junk fees,” Seth Schuster, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said by email. “Meanwhile, Donald Trump appointed the Supreme Court Justices who denied student-debt relief and ensured that young people now have less rights than the generations before them.”

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that “President Trump will create a safe, prosperous, and free nation that helps all young people achieve their American Dream.”

The pandemic upended the economy when young voters were just entering adulthood, endangering their job prospects as businesses locked down and complicating their housing options as rents skyrocketed.

“They had a more severe impact of COVID itself in a direct economic way,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Newhouse director of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “Whether it’s gas, or housing, or rent or health care, they’re having a really hard time having affordability for that because of the lack of stored wealth.”

Inflation has eased significantly in the past year, including for necessities such as food, but prices remain considerably higher than they were before the 2020 election. And while wages have grown for all age groups in recent years, young adults have the lowest earnings in addition to having fewer assets.

Debt is also souring some younger Americans’ views about the economy, according to EY Chief Economist Gregory Daco. Adults in their twenties and thirties have higher rates of credit-card debt that have deepened into serious delinquency, meaning the debt is 90 days or more past due, according to data from the New York Fed.

Many young adults are making payments on federal student debt that they had hoped would be forgiven by Biden’s plan. The White House has used more narrow methods to approve nearly $144 billion in forgiveness, targeting specific groups, including those with disabilities, some former for-profit college students and public servants who have been paying their loans for years.

Student loans and rent prices weigh on Ariela Lara, an 18-year-old high school senior from San Leandro, California, as she debates which college to attend. Lara said her family cannot afford to take on debt, so she will attend the school that offers her the most in aid.

“As I’ve been getting into this world of adulthood, it’s hard to achieve financial stability in our country,” she said, adding that climate change and the economy are her top issues as she considers her first vote in a presidential election. “We’re telling Biden to wake up and to start saying that he needs the youth vote. He needs us immensely.”

(Christian Hall contributed to this story.)

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

As the presidential campaign slowly progresses, artificial intelligence continues to accelerate at a breathless pace — capable of creating an infinite number of fraudulent images that are hard to detect and easy to believe.

Experts warn that by November voters will have witnessed counterfeit photos and videos of candidates enacting one scenario after another, with reality wrecked and the truth nearly unknowable.

“This is the first presidential campaign of the AI era,” said Matthew Stamm, a Drexel University electrical and computer engineering professor who leads a team that detects false or manipulated political images. “I believe things are only going to get worse.”

Last year, Stamm’s group debunked a political ad for then-presidential candidate Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ad that appeared on Twitter. It showed former President Donald Trump embracing and kissing Anthony Fauci, long a target of the right for his response to COVID-19.

That spot was a “watershed moment” in U.S. politics, said Stamm, director of his school’s Multimedia and Information Security Lab. “Using AI-created media in a misleading manner had never been seen before in an ad for a major presidential candidate,” he said.

“This showed us how there’s so much potential for AI to create voting misinformation. It could get crazy.”

Election experts speak with dread of AI’s potential to wreak havoc on the election: false “evidence” of candidate misconduct; sham videos of election workers destroying ballots or preventing people from voting; phony emails that direct voters to go to the wrong polling locations; ginned-up texts sending bogus instructions to election officials that create mass confusion.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt is leading a newly formed Election Threats Task Force, intended in part to combat misinformation about voting. In a brief interview, Schmidt noted that in recent years we’ve seen “how easily misinformation has been spread using far more primitive methods than AI — tweets and Facebook posts with no video or audio.

“So AI presents a far greater challenge if it’s weaponized to deceive voters or harm candidates.”

Sham Biden call

Like the internet itself, AI can be a powerful tool to both advance and hinder society.

And while bad actors have long possessed the ability to generate fraudulent content in the digital age, the contouring of text and imagery to shame or denigrate a political opponent was once “slow and painful,” said computer science professor David Doermann from the University of Buffalo, State University of New York.

“It took work to use Photoshop and video tools,” Doermann said. “You needed experts. But now, your average high school student can generate deepfakes.”

Deepfakes are synthetic media in which a person in a photo or video is swapped with another person’s likeness, or a person appears to be doing or saying something they didn’t do or say.

A recent example occurred before the January New Hampshire primary. An AI-generated robocall simulated President Joe Biden’s voice, urging voters not to participate, and “save” their votes for the November election.

Average voters could have easily believed Biden recorded the message and become disenfranchised as a result, noted the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government watchdog group in Washington, D.C.

“This is the first year to feature AI’s widespread influence before, during and after voters cast ballots,” said CLC executive director Adav Noti. “AI provides easy access to new tools to harm our democracy more effectively.”

Malicious intent

AI allows people with malicious intent to work with great speed and sophistication at low cost, according to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

That swiftness was on display in June 2018. Doermann’s University of Buffalo colleague, Siwei Lyu, presented a paper that demonstrated how AI-generated deepfake videos could be detected because no one was blinking their eyes; the faces had been transferred from still photos.

Within three weeks, AI-equipped fraudsters stopped creating deepfakes based on photos and began culling from videos in which people blinked naturally, Doermann said, adding, “Every time we publish a solution for detecting AI, somebody gets around it quickly.”

Six years later, with AI that much more developed, “it’s gained remarkable capacities that improve daily,” said political communications expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. “Anything we can say now about AI will change in two weeks. Increasingly, that means deepfakes won’t be easily detected.

“We should be suspicious of everything we see.”

‘Democracy can wither’

Misinformation has gushed like a “fire hose of falsehoods,” some of it from Russia, said Matt Jordan, director of the Pennsylvania State University News Literacy Initiative, which helps students and citizens distinguish “reliable journalism” from “the noise that often overwhelms and divides us,” according to its website.

Democracy, Jordan said, “depends on a capacity to share reality,” which misinformation shatters. In such an atmosphere, he warned, “democracy can wither.”

Politicians aren’t the only ones at risk in that atmosphere.

Security specialists recommend election workers keep personal social media accounts private so that pernicious individuals armed with AI have less access to their images and voices. To avoid online intimidation on Election Day, experts also suggest election workers use multistep log-ins, ever-changing pass phrases, and fingerprint scanning.

“In 2020, we encountered a lot of ugliness related to threats, and have had to scramble to make sure our people feel safe,” said Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s top election official.

AI-generated misinformation helps exacerbate already entrenched political polarization throughout America, said Cristina Bicchieri, Penn professor of philosophy and psychology.

“When we see something in social media that aligns with our point of view, even if it’s fake, we tend to want to believe it,” she said.

To battle fabrications, Stamm of Drexel said, the smart consumer could delay reposting emotionally charged material from social media until checking its veracity.

But that’s a lot to ask.

Human overreaction to a false report, he acknowledged, “is harder to resolve than any anti-AI stuff I develop in my lab.

“And that’s another reason why we’re in uncharted waters.”

_____

(c)2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at www.inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in the pivotal swing state of Wisconsin and three Northeastern states will have a chance to indicate their support or opposition to their parties’ presumptive nominees in presidential primaries Tuesday. Wisconsin voters will also decide the fate of two Republican-backed statewide ballot measures that will shape how elections in the state are run and funded.

Farther south, Arkansas and Mississippi voters will return to the polls to decide a handful of legislative seats that were forced to runoffs in primaries held in March.

Although multiple names remain on the presidential ballots in Wisconsin, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump face no major challengers and already have secured more delegates than they need to win their parties’ nominations at the conventions this summer. Voters in Connecticut and Rhode Island will have the additional option of voting “uncommitted” if they want to register a protest vote against Biden, a Democrat, or Trump, a Republican. Wisconsin voters have a similar option, although it’s called “Uninstructed Delegation” on their ballot.

Delaware was also scheduled to hold a Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, but the contest was canceled on March 19 after former candidate Nikki Haley had her name removed from the ballot, leaving Trump the only remaining candidate. A Democratic primary there would also have been held Tuesday, but Biden was the only candidate to file for the ballot, so the event was never scheduled. In both cases, the parties awarded all the state’s delegates to Biden and Trump, as they were the only candidates remaining in their contests.

DECISION NOTES

In the presidential race, Biden and Trump are the favorites in their primaries as neither candidate faces a strong challenge. In all four contests, the first indications that they are winning statewide on a level consistent with the overwhelming margins seen in most other contests held this year may be sufficient to determine the statewide winners.

For the Wisconsin constitutional amendments, the fault lines hew closely to traditional partisan lines, with Republican state lawmakers backing the two measures and Democrats in opposition. Thus, the state’s vote history and political demographics will inform the race-calling process.

As for the races in Arkansas and Mississippi, runoffs tend to be lower-turnout events than the initial elections that prompted them. For local races, in which turnout for regularly scheduled elections is already relatively low, this could slow the race-calling process in particularly close contests since determining the outcome could rest on a handful of votes. For example, in Arkansas state House District 63, only 108 votes separated the first- and second-place candidates, out of 1,700 total votes cast.

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Here are the April 2 contests at a glance:

DELEGATES AT STAKE ON TUESDAY

Democrats: 436

Republicans: 179

STATES WITH PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES (4)

Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin

STATES WITH NON-PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES AND ELECTIONS (3)

Arkansas (runoff), Mississippi (runoff), Wisconsin

TUESDAY TIMELINE

8 p.m. EDT: All polls close in Connecticut, Mississippi, Rhode Island

8:30 p.m. EDT: All polls close in Arkansas

9 p.m. EDT: All polls close in New York, Wisconsin

ARKANSAS

STATE HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 35 (D): Jessie McGruder, Raymond Whiteside

STATE HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 63 (D): Fred Leonard, Lincoln Barnett

STATE HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 88 (R): Arnetta Bradford, Dolly Henley

WHO CAN VOTE: Voters who participated in the March 5 primary for a specific seat may only vote in the same party’s runoff for that seat. In other words, voters who cast ballots in the Republican primary on March 5 may not vote in a Democratic runoff for the same seat. Voters who did not participate in any party’s primary for a specific seat on March 5 may also participate in the runoff. All voters must be registered in the district holding the runoff.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (March 5 primary): 8:36 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 3:28 a.m. ET with about 99.7% of the total votes counted

CONNECTICUT

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, Cenk Uygur, “Uncommitted.” 60 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Ryan Binkley, Ron DeSantis, Haley, “Uncommitted.” 28 delegates at stake

WHO CAN VOTE: Only voters registered with a party may participate in that party’s primary. Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary or vice versa.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 8:08 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 12:52 a.m. ET with about 99.9% of the total votes counted

MISSISSIPPI

U.S. HOUSE PRIMARY RUNOFF, DISTRICT 2 (R): Ron Eller, Andrew Smith

WHO CAN VOTE: Voters who participated in the March 12 primary for District 2 may only vote in the same party’s runoff. In other words, voters who cast ballots in the Democratic primary on March 12 may not vote in Tuesday’s Republican runoff. Voters who did not participate in any party’s primary for this seat on March 12 also may participate in the runoff. All voters must be registered in the 2nd Congressional District.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (March 12 primary): 8:07 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 12:35 a.m. ET with about 97% of the total votes counted

NEW YORK

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson. 268 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Chris Christie, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy. 91 delegates at stake

WHO CAN VOTE: New York has a closed primary system, which means only Democrats may vote in the Democratic primary and only Republicans may vote in the Republican primary.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 9:01 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 2:49 a.m. ET with about 94% of the total votes counted

RHODE ISLAND

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, “Uncommitted,” Write-in. 26 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, “Uncommitted,” Write-in. 19 delegates at stake

WHO CAN VOTE: Rhode Island voters registered with a specific political party may cast ballots only in their own party’s primaries. Voters who are not affiliated with any party may participate in any party primary, but doing so will automatically affiliate them with that party in state records.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 8:10 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 11:03 p.m. ET with about 97% of total votes counted

WISCONSIN

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (D): Biden, Dean Phillips, “Uninstructed Delegation,” Write-In. 82 delegates at stake

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY (R): Trump, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, “Uninstructed Delegation,” Write-In. 41 delegates at stake

STATEWIDE BALLOT MEASURE, QUESTION 1: “Use of private funds in election administration. Shall section 7 (1) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that private donations and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or used in connection with the conduct of any primary, election, or referendum?”

STATEWIDE BALLOT MEASURE, QUESTION 2: “Election officials. Shall section 7 (2) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums?”

WHO CAN VOTE: Any registered voter in Wisconsin may participate in either primary.

FIRST VOTES REPORTED (2022 primaries): 9:14 p.m. ET

LAST ELECTION NIGHT UPDATE: 3:01 a.m. ET with about 99.8% of the total votes counted

UNCOMMITTED ON THE BALLOT

Connecticut, Rhode Island, Wisconsin (as “Uninstructed Delegation”)

ARE WE THERE YET?

As of Tuesday, there will be 104 days until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, 139 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and 217 days until the November general election.

ROBERT YOON is an elections and democracy reporter for The Associated Press, with a focus on analyzing vote and demographic data and explaining the intricacies of the electoral process. He is now covering his seventh presidential campaign cycle.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — An appeals court ruling that weakened a key part of the Voting Rights Act is spurring lawmakers in several states to enact state-level protections to plug gaps that the ruling opened in the landmark federal law aimed at prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.

Democratic-led states have been taking matters into their own hands because national legislation to expand voting rights remains stalled in a divided Congress. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in many states have tried to erode safeguards in the name of protecting election integrity amid former President Donald Trump’s false claims that vote fraud cost him the 2020 election.

Legislators in Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey and Florida are pursuing state voting rights acts, building on ones enacted by New York in 2022 and Connecticut in 2023, as well as ones enacted earlier in Virginia, Oregon, Washington and California.

“And we know of interest from other states that are considering taking up state VRAs in the next year or so,” said Michael Pernick, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York.

In Minnesota, Democratic Rep. Emma Greenman, of Minneapolis, said she felt an urgent need to act after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year in an Arkansas case that voters and groups could no longer sue under Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act — only the U.S. attorney general.

Section 2 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, including maps that disadvantage voters of color. Lawsuits have long been brought under the section to try to ensure Black voters have adequate political representation in places with a long history of racism, including many Southern states.

The appeals court decision currently applies only to the seven states in the 8th Circuit, which stretches from Minnesota to Arkansas. Legal observers expect the case to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“As with other areas of policy, what you’re seeing is, states really have to say, ‘We need to make sure that … we have a system that is free from discrimination, we need to protect the rights of voters,’” Greenman said.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act is seen as a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. But federal courts have “chipped away” at it over the decades, said Lata Nott, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., who testified for the Minnesota bill.

The biggest blow to the federal law in the view of voting rights advocates was a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in an Alabama case that stripped the government of a potent tool to stop voting bias by eliminating the requirement that jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting get “preclearance” from the federal government for major changes in the way they hold elections.

Conservatives have argued the requirement did not account for racial progress and other changes in society and that existing voting rights protections are adequate.

“It looks like this an effort by the Left in the state to do at the state level what they can’t do at the federal level under the VRA,” said Zack Smith, a legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

The 8th Circuit decision sounded new alarms because most lawsuits to enforce the act have come from private individuals and groups, not the Justice Department, Nott said. Administrations change, so allowing people to protect their own voting rights is a “valuable enforcement mechanism,” she said.

There are broad similarities among the various state voting rights acts under consideration and the New York and Connecticut laws. They all give voters and groups a “private right of action” to challenge laws that dilute or suppress the votes of people of color, Pernick said. That’s the right the 8th Circuit struck down on the federal level.

Some of the state proposals also include preclearance requirements for changes in voting to make sure they don’t harm voters of color.

Several state proposals include “safe harbor” provisions to try to head off the kind of lengthy, expensive litigation that often has been needed to enforce the federal law. The Minnesota bill, for example, would require potential plaintiffs to notify political subdivisions before they sue to create opportunities to negotiate remedies first.

Minnesota has an image as progressive on voting rights, and the current Legislature is the most diverse in state history. But witnesses who testified before the Legislature recently said there are still problems.

They point to data showing county boards across the state, which make important decisions affecting communities of color, are disproportionately white. Electing local bodies by districts that minority candidates could win, instead of at-large seats, is one potential remedy for preventing vote dilution.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who is president-elect of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said he is trying to enlist as many of his fellow election officers across the country to file a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 8th Circuit decision if the plaintiffs in the Arkansas case appeal. But for now, he said, that ruling is the law in seven states.

“If we can no longer count on the federal Voting Rights Act to allow private citizens to protect their own voting rights, then we need a Minnesota Voting Rights Act to fill the gap,” Simon testified. “And that’s what this bill does. It fills the gap by guaranteeing a day in court for Minnesota voters to defend their voting rights against laws or policies that they believe discriminate against them.”

Officials with groups representing Minnesota’s local governments testified they support the concept but were concerned about the potential extra costs it could impose on them, an issue that raised concerns among Republicans on the committees that have heard the bill. Republicans also argued it’s a heavier-handed tool than Minnesota needs.

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he had not studied the proposal in detail, but he shares the ideals of making voting easy and accessible.

“If this is moving down those paths, that’s a good thing,” Walz said.

Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion, a Minneapolis Democrat, is the lead author of the Minnesota Voting Rights Act in the Senate.

“Our democracy is important. We want more people voting, not less. We want more people’s voice to be heard, not silenced. We want people’s rights to be protected, not squandered,” Champion said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is raising gobs of cash. And it has an election-year strategy that, in a nutshell, aims to spend more — and spend faster.

Not only has Biden aimed to show himself off as a fundraising juggernaut this month, but his campaign is also making significant early investments both on the ground and on the airwaves — hoping to create a massive organizational advantage that leaves Republican Donald Trump scrambling to catch up.

But while the money pouring in has given Biden and the Democrats a major cash advantage, it’s also becoming clear Biden will need it. Throughout his life in business and politics, Trump’s provocations have earned him near limitless free media attention. Biden, meanwhile, has often struggled to cut through the noise with his own message despite holding the presidency.

That means Biden is going to need oodles of cash to blanket battleground states where a few thousand votes could mean the difference between victory or defeat. Add to that the challenge of reaching millennials, as well as even younger voters, who formed an important part of his 2020 coalition, in a far more fractured media ecosystem that skews toward streaming services over conventional broadcast and cable.

Biden’s organizational and outreach effort began in earnest this month, with the campaign using his State of the Union address as a launching pad to open 100 new field offices nationwide and boosting the number of paid staff in battleground states to 350 people. It’s also currently in the middle of a $30 million television and digital advertising campaign targeting specific communities such as Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.

In one example of the incumbent president’s organizational advantage, his reelection campaign in February had 480 staffers on the ground, compared with 311 to that of Trump and the Republican National Committee, according to Biden campaign officials.

“We’re ramping up campaign headquarters and field offices, hiring staff all across the country before Trump and his MAGA Republicans have even opened one single office,” Biden boasted Friday in New York during a meeting of his national finance committee, which included 200 of his largest donors and fundraisers from in and around the city.

A massive ground game disadvantage didn’t prevent Trump from winning the presidency in 2016, a fact Democrats keenly remember.

“It’s one of the stubborn challenges of Trump,” said Robby Mook, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. “Trump is Trump’s best organizer, and Trump can motivate people from the podium.”

But, Mook added, the Biden campaign is doing what it needs to do, pointing to the State of the Union as a powerful example of how to effectively mobilize the base and harness the anti-Trump energy that will inevitably motivate many Democrats this year.

“The most magical and the scariest part of politics is, you never know until Election Day,” Mook said. “And so I wouldn’t want to leave anything on the table if I were them, and the great part about having a resource advantage is, you get to have all these different things.”

Even Biden’s bricks-and-mortar campaign is likely to be far more costly this year.

Unlike 2020, when many Americans were hunkered down due to the pandemic, Biden will need to travel more while also building a political infrastructure that will be far more expensive than the socially distanced, virtual campaign he waged from his basement the last time around.

His reelection campaign will also have expenses that Trump won’t have to confront, such as reimbursing the federal government for use of Air Force One. So far, it has reimbursed $4.5 million for use of the official presidential aircraft for political activity, according to the campaign.

Mook said decisions about how to strategically invest the campaign’s cash are never as nimble as the staff wants them to be, and there is not only a risk in spending too much, too fast — but also spending far too late in an election year.

Last fall and summer, Democrats fretted about Biden’s early lack of fundraising and campaign activity. Writers’ and actors’ guild strikes in Hollywood didn’t help, either — effectively sidelining the pro-labor union president from raising money in a region that has long bankrolled the party’s political ambitions.

Now, even donors lukewarm to the president are contributing, Democratic Party donors and fundraisers say.

“I think people really want to hear what they have to say,” said Michael Smith, a major Hollywood donor and fundraiser, who hosted a Los Angeles event earlier this year featuring rocker Lenny Kravitz and held another event last week in Palm Springs with the president’s wife, Jill Biden. “They realize this is an investment.”

Trump campaign officials concede that Biden and the Democrats will likely have more cash to spend, though they argue that Trump will still be able to run an effective campaign given his ability to attract media coverage.

“Our digital online fundraising continues to skyrocket, our major donor investments are climbing, and Democrats are running scared of the fundraising prowess of President Trump,” said Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign. “We are not only raising the necessary funds but we are deploying strategic assets that will help send President Trump back to the White House and carry Republicans over the finish line.”

But given Trump’s propensity for making explosive remarks, that can also cut both ways, which Democrats are sure to exploit by using their cash advantage to run ads. Trump’s legal fees from the myriad of court cases he is tied up with are also sure to be a drag on his cash situation. Records show his political operation has shelled out at least $80 million to cover court costs over the past two years.

“Trump promises to be a Dictator on Day 1, suspend our Constitution and bring back political violence even worse than January 6. His MAGA agenda is so toxic and extreme that hundreds of thousands of Republicans in swing states voted for Nikki Haley over him, even after she dropped out — how unique!” Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said. “Donald Trump has no resources or even the will to bring those critical voters back.”

There’s also the open question of whether Trump will be able to break through in the same ways he did in 2016, when he was a political novelty. Or as he did during the 2020 election, when he held the presidency and was a ubiquitous presence at a time when locked-down Americans were glued to their TVs.

“The media landscape and where voters get their news has changed and so assumptions based on Trump’s ability to dominate mainstream media conversations should be questioned,” said Josh Schwerin, a Democratic strategist who formerly worked at Priorities USA, the Democrats’ primary super PAC during the 2020 presidential campaign.

“Fewer voters are getting their news from traditional outlets and finding ways to get information in front of them is getting harder and harder — and that takes money,” he said. “Both candidates are going to have to do this. And this is one place where having a financial advantage is going to be a big benefit to the Biden campaign.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The video shared by former President Donald Trump features horror movie music and footage of migrants purportedly entering the U.S. from countries including Cameroon, Afghanistan and China. Shots of men with tattoos and videos of violent crime are set against close-ups of people waving and wrapping themselves in American flags.

“They’re coming by the thousands,” Trump says in the video, posted on his social media site. “We will secure our borders. And we will restore sovereignty.”

In his speeches and online posts, Trump has ramped up anti-immigrant rhetoric as he seeks the White House a third time, casting migrants as dangerous criminals “poisoning the blood” of America. Hitting the nation’s deepest fault lines of race and national identity, his messaging often relies on falsehoods about migration. But it resonates with many of his core supporters going back a decade, to when “build the wall” chants began to ring out at his rallies.

President Joe Biden and his allies discuss the border very differently. The Democrat portrays the situation as a policy dispute that Congress can fix and hits Republicans in Washington for backing away from a border security deal after facing criticism from Trump.

But in a potentially worrying sign for Biden, Trump’s message appears to be resonating with key elements of the Democratic coalition that Biden will need to win over this November.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of how Biden is handling border security, including about 4 in 10 Democrats, 55% of Black adults and 73% of Hispanic adults, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 45% of Americans described the situation as a crisis, while another 32% said it was a major problem.

Vetress Boyce, a Chicago-based racial justice activist, was among those who expressed frustration with Biden’s immigration policies and the city’s approach as it tries to shelter newly arriving migrants. She argued Democrats should be focusing on economic investment in Black communities, not newcomers.

“They’re sending us people who are starving, the same way Blacks are starving in this country. They’re sending us people who want to escape the conditions and come here for a better lifestyle when the ones here are suffering and have been suffering for over 100 years,” Boyce said. “That recipe is a mixture for disaster. It’s a disaster just waiting to happen.”

Gracie Martinez is a 52-year-old Hispanic small business owner from Eagle Pass, Texas, the border town that Trump visited in February when he and Biden made same-day trips to the state. Martinez said she once voted for former President Barack Obama and is still a Democrat, but now backs Trump — mainly because of the border.

“It’s horrible,” she said. “It’s tons and tons of people and they’re giving them medical and money, phones,” she said, complaining those who went through the legal immigration system are treated worse.

Priscilla Hesles, 55, a teacher who lives in Eagle Pass, Texas, described the current situation as “almost an overtaking” that had changed the town.

“We don’t know where they’re hiding. We don’t know where they’ve infiltrated into and where are they going to come out of,” said Hesles, who said she used to take an evening walk to a local church, but stopped after she was shaken by an encounter with a group of men she alleged were migrants.

Immigration will almost certainly be one of the central issues in November’s election, with both sides spending the next six months trying to paint the other as wrong on border security.

The White House has also mulled a series of executive actions that could drastically tighten immigration restrictions, effectively going around Congress after it failed to pass the bipartisan deal Biden endorsed.

“Trump is a fraud who is only out for himself,” said Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz. “We will make sure voters know that this November.”

Trump will campaign Tuesday in Wisconsin and Michigan this week, where he is expected to again tear into Biden on immigration. His campaign said his event in the western Michigan city of Grand Rapids will focus on what it alleged was “Biden’s Border Bloodbath.”

The former president calls recent record-high arrests for southwest border crossings an “invasion” orchestrated by Democrats to transform America’s very makeup. Trump accuses Biden of purposely allowing criminals and potential terrorists to enter the country unchecked, going so far as to claim the president is engaged in a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”

He also casts migrants — many of them women and children escaping poverty and violence — as “ poisoning the blood ” of America with drugs and disease and claimed some are “not people.” Experts who study extremism warn against using dehumanizing language in describing migrants.

There is no evidence that foreign governments are emptying their jails or mental asylums as Trump says. And while conservative news coverage has been dominated by several high-profile and heinous crimes allegedly committed by people in the country illegally, the latest FBI statistics show overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.

Studies have also found that people living in the country illegally are far less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes.

“Certainly the last several months have demonstrated a clear shift in political support,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the immigrant resettlement group Global Refuge and a former Obama administration and State Department official.

“I think that relates to the rhetoric of the past several years,” she said, “and just this dynamic of being outmatched by a loud, extreme of xenophobic rhetoric that hasn’t been countered with reality and the facts on the ground.”

Part of what has made the border such a salient issue is that its impact is being felt far from the border.

Trump allies, most notably Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have used state-funded buses to send more than 100,000 migrants to Democratic-led cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, where Democrats will hold this summer’s convention. While the program was initially dismissed as a publicity stunt, the influx has strained city budgets and left local leaders scrambling to provide emergency housing and medical care for new groups of migrants.

Local news coverage, meanwhile, has often been negative. Viewers have seen migrants blamed for everything from a string of gang-related New Jersey robberies to burglary rings targeting retail stores in suburban Philadelphia to measles cases in parts of Arizona and Illinois.

Abbott has deployed the Texas National Guard to the border, placed concertina wire along parts of the Rio Grande in defiance of U.S. Supreme Court orders, and has argued his state should be able to enforce its own immigration laws.

Some far-right internet sites have begun pointing to Abbott’s actions as the first salvo in a coming civil war. And Russia has also helped spread and amplify misleading and incendiary content about U.S. immigration and border security as part of its broader efforts to polarize Americans. A recent analysis by the firm Logically, which tracks Russian disinformation, found online influencers and social media accounts linked to the Kremlin have seized on the idea of a new civil war and efforts by states like Texas to secede from the union.

Amy Cooter, who directs research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, worries the current wave of civil war talk will only increase as the election nears. So far, it has generally been limited to far-right message boards. But immigration is enough of a concern generally that its political potency is intensified, Cooter said.

“Non-extremist Americans are worried about this, too,” she said. “It’s about culture and perceptions about who is an American.”

In the meantime, there are people like Rudy Menchaca, an Eagle Pass bar owner who also works for a company that imports Corona beer from Mexico and blamed the problems at the border for hurting business.

Menchaca is the kind of Hispanic voter Biden is counting on to back his reelection bid. The 27-year-old said he was never a fan of Trump’s rhetoric and how he portrayed Hispanics and Mexicans. “We’re not all like that,” he said.

But he also said he was warming to the idea of backing the former president because of the reality on the ground.

“I need those soldiers to be around if I have my business,” Menchaca said of Texas forces dispatched to the border. “The bad ones that come in could break in.”

Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers David Klepper in Washington and Matt Brown in Chicago contributed to this report.

The presumptive GOP nominee’s morning email with the heading “I’m suspending my campaign…” was Monday morning’s top, April Fools’ Day political clickbait.

The Trump team quickly added, “Just Kidding — Happy April Fools Day.” Trump then rattled off all that ails President Joe Biden, from “Open borders, sky rocketing crime, record inflation, targeted prosecutions, humiliation overseas.”

Trump then asks for 100,000 to “chip in $25” to help offset Biden’s mega-donor fund-raiser last week in New York City.

Biden’s campaign says the shindig they booked at Radio City Music Hall featuring former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton was the “the most successful political fundraiser in American history.”

Before Biden was even joined on stage Thursday evening in New York by his Democratic forerunners in front of 5,000 paid attendees, with a sold out show and second row seats going for $500,000 a piece the campaign was apparently able to pull in an eye-popping $25 million for just the one event.

Not to be outdone, Trump is inviting wealthy donors to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for an April 6 fundraiser hosted by New York hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, the Associated Press is reporting.

As for MSNBC, the cable crew is still being beat up over hiring and then immediately firing Ronna McDaniel, the former RNC chair. And that one is no joke.

President Joe Biden’s Easter message was issued by the White House just after 9 a.m. Sunday.

“Jill and I send our warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating Easter Sunday. Easter reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection.

“As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities. And with wars and conflict taking a toll on innocent lives around the world, we renew our commitment to work for peace, security, and dignity for all people. From our family to yours, happy Easter and may God bless you,” the president wrote.

Former President Donald Trump’s first message of the day was a reminder to his supporters to “never forget our cowards and weaklings.”

“Such a disgrace,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform to go along with a Washington Examiner article on the departure of Wisconsin’s U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher.

“HAPPY EASTER,” he said in a post that came right after.

Several hours later the 45th President issued what might be called a standard-Trump holiday message, delivering an all-caps Easter missive heavy with attacks on his perceived enemies.

After wishing a “happy Easter to all” the former president went on to make clear he included “crooked and corrupt prosecutors and judges” and people that he “completely” and “totally” despises “because they want to destroy America, a now failing nation.” Trump then called out “deranged” Special Counsel Jack Smith, “sick” Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, and “lazy” Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg directly. All three have brought criminal charges against the former president.

“Happy Easter everyone,” he wrote after.

High elevation regions like the Berkshires and northern Worcester County have upwards of a 50% chance of seeing a foot of snowfall midweek, NWS Meteorologist Torry Dooley told the Herald.

There is a 60% to 70% chance those regions see six inches or more by Thursday, according to the forecaster.

“There is some possibility for some significant snow,” Dooley said.

The rest of the state will probably just get wet for most of the week, he said, though there is a chance the Boston region sees some wintery mix that does not stick around after falling.

“These systems during the off seasons are always difficult, because there isn’t really much cold air locked in place,” he said. “It’s really marginal temperatures for snow to accumulate.”

Monday will see highs in the mid-50s and could be rainy but won’t be a total washout, according to the meteorologist. Most of the rain that does fall will be felt south of Boston and around the Cape, he said. Overnight temperatures fall just below 40 degrees.

The mercury only climbs into the mid-40s on Tuesday and rain showers are possible in the afternoon, Dooley said. NWS predicts up to an inch of rain is possible with a 30% chance of precipitation. The chance of rain increases steadily overnight and rain becomes likely after 3 a.m. Wednesday.

It will be chilly, windy, and wet on Wednesday, with a 90% chance of rain, highs barely reaching into the low-40s and gusts up to 40 mph possible. Overnight lows stay above freezing for most of the state but could fall below 30 degrees in high elevations and bring the snow along, Dooley said.

Rain is likely Thursday, according to the weather service, when there is a 70% chance of precipitation and more gusty wind forecast. High temperatures will hover in the low-40s through the day before falling close to freezing overnight.

The clouds part somewhat and the chance of rain falls to 30% by Friday, when the temperature is expected to climb back into the mid-40s. Similar conditions are called for Saturday. Sunday could bring mid-50s temps under sunny skies.

“There’s really no good way to sugar coat: we have another active weather week ahead with rain Tuesday through Thursday night,” Dooley said.

There is some concern another week of rainfall could lead to flooding, Dooley said, and the weather service will be monitoring the river and stream levels to determine if weather advisories are required. NWS will likely have a snowfall map available later this week, he said.

“Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans: You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong. You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back,” Biden declared.

While the Transgender Day of Visibility is not new — the event has been held annually by international human rights advocates since 2009 — this year March 31 happened to coincide with Easter, and the timing of Biden’s proclamation was not entirely well received.

Karoline Leavitt, former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign press secretary, went so far as to call the president’s proclamation “blasphemous.”

“We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” she said in a statement.

Leavitt and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also called out Biden over this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll event, claiming the president prohibited the use of religious symbols in egg design submissions, after a flier for the event put out by the American Egg Board requested only submissions that did not “include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.”

“The Biden White House has betrayed the central tenet of Easter — which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Banning sacred truth and tradition—while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day’—is outrageous and abhorrent. The American people are taking note,” Johnson said via the social media app formerly known as Twitter.

The Biden White House has betrayed the central tenet of Easter — which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Banning sacred truth and tradition—while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as “Transgender Day”—is outrageous and abhorrent. The American people are taking note. pic.twitter.com/ZCExyVkAVS

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) March 30, 2024

“It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House prohibited children from submitting religious egg designs for their Easter Art Event, and formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden Administration’s years-long assault on the Christian faith,” Leavitt said.

Despite any blowback over the proclamation, the White House’s official social media accounts and those of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were used to express support for the March 31 Transgender Day of Visibility, with both 2024 Democratic candidates declaring that “trans rights are human rights.”

On Transgender Day of Visibility, we celebrate transgender and nonbinary Americans. Their courage has given countless others strength, but no one should have to be brave just to be themselves.

We see you. We stand with you. We won’t stop fighting for you. pic.twitter.com/pVPLDolpjk

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 31, 2024

“Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our nation. On Transgender Day of Visibility, our Administration honors the extraordinary courage of transgender Americans and reaffirms our commitment to forming a more perfect union – where all people are treated equally,” a post by the White House account read.

Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our nation.

On Transgender Day of Visibility, our Administration honors the extraordinary courage of transgender Americans and reaffirms our commitment to forming a more perfect union – where all people are treated equally. pic.twitter.com/ElRf9l62Nk

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 31, 2024

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey also joined the conversation, posting her own message of support for the Bay State’s transgender community.

Our trans friends, family, and neighbors should feel seen, safe, and celebrated for being exactly who they are.

On Transgender Day of Visibility, and always, we’re committed to protecting your freedom to live fully and authentically.

— Maura Healey (@MassGovernor) March 31, 2024

“Our trans friends, family, and neighbors should feel seen, safe, and celebrated for being exactly who they are. On Transgender Day of Visibility, and always, we’re committed to protecting your freedom to live fully and authentically,” she wrote.

According to White House staff, uproar over the family-friendly Easter Egg Roll tradition is misplaced. The event has held the same non-denominational standard for submitted egg designs through all presidential administrations over the last several decades, including the four years of the Trump White House.

“Fyi on all the misleading swirl re White House and Easter: the American Egg Board flyer’s standard non-discrimination language requesting artwork has been used for the last 45 years, across all Dem & Republican Admins—for all WH Easter Egg Rolls —incl previous Administration’s,” deputy assistant to the president Elizabeth Alexander wrote on X.

Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility were not the only occasions marked this March 31, which was also National Farm Workers Day, Cesar Chavez Day, National Baked Ham with Pineapple Day, National Crayon Day, National Tater Day, Transfer Day (for residents of the U.S. Virgin Islands), and Eifel Tower Day.

Next year, Easter will fall on April 20th, a day associated with both marijuana slang and the birth Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, though it’s unlikely either event will receive a White House proclamation. It will again fall on March 31 in the year 2086.

Herald wire service contributed.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — President Joe Biden has won North Dakota’s Democratic presidential primary.

The state party on Saturday announced the results of the mostly mail-in primary. The party began circulating ballots in February to voters who asked for them.

Biden’s victory was virtually assured, though seven other candidates were on the primary ballot.

Former President Donald Trump won the North Dakota Republican Party’s March 4 presidential caucuses, taking all 29 delegates.

Biden and Trump have already secured enough delegates for their parties’ nominations, lining up the first presidential rematch election since 1956.

Sen. Bernie Sanders won the North Dakota Democratic caucuses in 2016 and 2020.

Delahunt died from a long-term illness surrounded by family while at the Marina Bay neighborhood, his family said in a statement in a statement to the Herald.

“While we mourn the loss of such a tremendous person, we also celebrate his remarkable life and his legacy of dedication, service, and inspiration. We thank everyone who has given him, and our family, care, and support. We would also like to acknowledge all those who stood with him for so many years in his work towards making a difference in the community, throughout our country and the world. We could always turn to him for wisdom, solace and a laugh, and his absence leaves a gaping hole in our family and our hearts,” the family said.

As the district attorney for Norfolk County for over 22 years, Delahunt pioneered the nation’s first prosecutorial unit focused on domestic violence and sexual assault cases and programs to combat violence against women that later became models for the rest of the country.

He served as the representative for Massachusetts’ 10th Congressional District from 1997 to 2011, which included the South Shore, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Delahunt said his decision in November 2010 to not run for re-election “had nothing to do with politics.”

“I’ve been wrestling with this decision for a while,” he said, according to Herald reporting from the time, which credited former U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as urging Delahunt to stay in office to help pass former President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.

His departure from Washington was mourned by fellow Democrats, including former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, who said Delahunt had an “incredibly strong voice” for Massachusetts and would leave a “void” in Congress.

As he ran for a first-term in Congress in September 1996, Delahunt pointed to unrest among the middle class about living standards at the time.

“There’s a growing sense on the part of the middle class that sustained middle-class living standards for many now are being eviscerated, or at least an effort has been made to reduce them dramatically during this past session of Congress,” Delahunt said, according to Associated Press reporting from the time.

One of Delahunt’s more debated accomplishments as a U.S. representative saw him broker a deal in 2005 with then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to provide winter heating oil to low-income residents in Massachusetts. Delahunt cast the deal as a “humanitarian gesture,” according to news accounts from the time.

The move earned him some backlash from critics and was seen by some as an attempt to put a thorn in the side of the Bush administration.

But Delahunt, who was later present at Chavez’s state funeral in 2013, brushed off the pushback.

“I don’t report to George Bush,” Delahunt said in December 2005, according to reporting by the Associated Press. “I’m elected by the people here in Massachusetts. So I don’t feel any particular need to consult with George Bush or Dick Cheney about oil.”

He was a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and served as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, among other designations. Delahunt was also a congressional delegate to the United Nations.

When Delahunt announced he was leaving office in 2010, Republicans eyed his seat as a potential momentum builder in the wake of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s victory earlier that year. But ultimately, Democrats would retain the seat when U.S. Rep. Bill Keating declared victory in November 2010 over Republican Jeffrey Perry.

After leaving office, Delahunt worked at the law firm Eckert Seamans, which said in a statement they were “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of our partner and friend.”

“Bill was a tremendous colleague and dear friend to many at the firm. Throughout Bill’s numerous years of dedicated service to the legal and U.S. political community, Delahunt developed significant relationships with world leaders, ambassadors, and countless clients of Eckert Seamans, as well as advancing his community in Massachusetts. Our firm extends heartful thoughts and prayers to Bill’s family during this difficult time,” the company said in a statement.

Delahunt had a stint in the state’s cannabis industry after leaving politics.

He ran Medical Marijauna of Massachusetts, a firm that at one point was granted provisional approval to sell medical cannabis but was later turned down in June 2014 because of profit-sharing concerns with a management company also led by Delahunt, among others.

He stepped down as the company’s chief executive officer in March 2014, the Herald reported.

Delahunt’s was recognized in October 2022 when the Norfolk County Superior Courthouse was named in his honor.

“The challenge to improve the quality of life for our communities was exciting and inspiring, and our initiatives fundamentally transformed the justice system,” Delahunt said at the time.

Herald editor Joe Dwinell contributed reporting.

Donald Trump should challenge Joe Biden to a round of golf instead, eighteen holes, head-to-head, match play, mano a mano, winner take all — or almost all.

There would still be an election, of course. But surely the winner of the golfing tournament, called the Presidential Save Democracy Open, would surely have an edge going down the stretch or fairway.

Or it could be called the Geezer Golf Open since Trump is 77 and Biden is 81.

Either way, the idea of the two elderly golfing presidents facing off against each other surfaced after Biden mocked Trump for bragging about winning two club championships at the International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, which Trump happens to own.

“I won both,” Trump trumpeted.

Biden snidely commented, “Congratulations, Donald. Quite the accomplishment.”

This led golfing critics to sarcastically ask, “If you can’t win playing at a golf club you own, where can you win?

What was left out of the story was that critics said that Trump won those club trophies playing by himself.

Trump, who plays golf all the time at one of the golf clubs he owns, is no duffer, though.

“Duffer,” a derogatory golf label, is a name he would reserve for Biden — like “Sleepy Joe” and “Crooked Joe.” Now Trump would call him “Duffer Joe.”

Besides, Biden does not play nearly enough golf as Trump, except when Hunter Biden needs him to fill out a foursome of business partners with no one around to shout “fore.”

Of course, there would have to be certain rules agreed upon, like the site of the match, before the event could be held.

The pair could play at the neutral and iconic Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., where the Master’s Tournament is played annually.

Trump would be safe there since it is outside of Fulton County, where troubled District Attorney Fani Willis is trying to prosecute him on election interference charges.

However, given Willis’ bizarre testimony and unusual prosecutorial behavior, it is more likely that she will be standing trial before Trump does.

Another rule concerns the use of golf carts and who drives them. While professional golfers and their caddies walk the course, you cannot expect Trump and Biden to follow suit. Biden can barely make it to his helicopter.

The course, after all, hitting from the back tees is 7,475 yards or 4.25 miles long. It is shorter hitting from the ladies tees.

And while the older Biden could request to hit from the ladies’ tees, it is something that Trump would never agree with, let alone hit from them himself, despite risking the women’s vote. It is a macho thing.

Also, you cannot expect that Trump and Biden would agree to ride in the same golf cart, squabbling over who would do the driving. So, they would need separate carts, not only for themselves, but for the horde of Secret Service agents dressed as golfers who would provide security and fetch lost balls from the woods.

Since critics have accused both of cheating at the game, monitors would be on the lookout for “foot shots.” That is when a golfer uses his foot instead of a club to get the golf ball out of the rough and onto the fairway.

Golfing and political lore have it that it was the favorite shot of presidential golfers Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and no one dared call them out.

While Biden may appear to be at a disadvantage, it would be mistaken to sell him short. Golf is a mental as well as a physical game, and a golfer’s mental state and psychological outlook are as important as his putter.

All Biden has to do to rattle Trump is to show up at Augusta in his Whitey Bulger look-alike outfit.

The outfit has Biden decked out in an eerie-looking imitation of the late South Boston psychopath and killer Whitey Bulger, complete with a bomber jacket, aviator sunglasses, slicked hair, and menacing s look. Check the photos,

That would scare the bejesus out of anybody.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

At the U.S. Supreme Court these days, judicial liberals don’t have much clout. The real fights mostly take place between the court’s far-right and its more traditional conservatives.

Tuesday’s argument over abortion pills provided a perfect example, and it highlighted the stakes the 2024 presidential election will have for the court. In particular, it illustrated one of the ways a second term for former President Trump could dramatically differ from his first, with huge consequences for abortion rights, among other topics.

Abortion endangers the GOP

The political backdrop to the high court’s argument is clear: The politics of abortion continue to bedevil Republicans.

The GOP achieved a long-standing goal in 2022 when the newly reinforced conservative majority on the court overturned Roe vs. Wade, the ruling that for nearly a half-century had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. The court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health tossed abortion policy back to the states, 15 of which now ban all or nearly all abortions, with six more imposing tight restrictions.

Those bans have not succeeded in reducing the number of abortions in the U.S., largely because of the wide availability of abortion pills. But they have generated a wave of anger among voters, especially women, that has sunk Republican candidates in swing districts and states.

The most recent example came a few hours after the high court argument, when a Democrat, Marilyn Lands, won a special election to fill a largely suburban state legislative district in northern Alabama. Lands had focused her campaign on reproductive rights.

Her landslide victory — a 25-point margin in a closely divided district — was the first test of voter sentiment since the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos created by in vitro fertilization should be considered children under state law, a decision that the state legislature hurriedly tried to overturn after furious voter reaction.

The conservative split

The lesson that many traditional conservatives have drawn from their election defeats is that the GOP should ease away from opposition on abortion. That may have influenced some of the Republican-appointed justices as they considered Tuesday’s challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s rules that allow widespread dispensing of mifepristone: They treated the case like an unwelcome guest — to be ushered out as rapidly as possible with a stern admonition not to return.

To the justices on the far right, it represented something else — a missed opportunity for now and a chance to set down markers for the future.

Representing the Biden administration, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued that the antiabortion group seeking to overturn the rules lacked standing to bring the case.

Standing refers to the legal principle that to challenge a law or rule, you have to be affected by it — you can’t just have a generalized grievance.

The antiabortion doctors who brought the case claimed they were affected because at some point, one of them might be in an emergency room when a woman who had taken mifepristone would show up seeking treatment for heavy bleeding, which is an occasional effect of the drug. If that happened, they would be forced to choose between their conscientious objections to abortion and their duty to care for a patient, they argued.

Prelogar said those claims “rest on a long chain of remote contingencies” that didn’t come “within a hundred miles” of establishing standing.

Even if the doctors had standing, the proper remedy for their claim would be to say that they could not be required to participate in an abortion — a right they already have under federal law, said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed. The case was “a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an F.D.A. rule or any other federal government action,” he said. He didn’t mean that as a compliment.

Gorsuch, of course, was appointed to the court by Trump. Another Trump appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, also appeared skeptical that the doctors had standing. The third Trump appointee, Justice Brett M. Kavanugh, said very little, but the one question he asked suggested that he, too, would likely side with the FDA.

How Trump could ban abortion pills

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas were the only members of the court who seemed open to the arguments presented by Erin Hawley, the lawyer representing the antiabortion group.

In their questions, both also circled back to a related legal issue, the potential impact of an 1873 law known as the Comstock Act. That law, best known for banning “lewd” material from the mail, also bans any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use it or apply it for producing abortion.”

The law hasn’t been enforced in decades, but up through the 1930s, it was repeatedly used to prosecute people for mailing birth control devices or even medical texts about contraception.

In 2022, the Justice Department issued a formal ruling that the law wasn’t applicable to mifepristone because the drug has medical uses beyond abortion.

That ruling, however, could be reversed by a future administration. Antiabortion groups have made clear that if Trump wins another term, they’ll make the Comstock Act a high priority.

The Comstock law is “fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours,” Thomas said at one point to Jessica Ellsworth, the lawyer representing Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone. His remark sounded like a warning.

Why two Bush justices, not Trump ones, make up the far right

The comments by Gorsuch and Barrett on the one side and Thomas and Alito on the other highlighted a paradoxical reality of the current court: The justices Trump named to the court aren’t the ones most likely to side with the MAGA movement’s priorities. Instead, the far-right members, Thomas and Alito, were appointed by two avatars of the pre-Trump GOP establishment — the Presidents Bush, father and son.

That doesn’t mean that the three Trump appointees are moderates. They’re solidly conservative. But they are establishment conservatives.

During Trump’s tenure, the process of picking and confirming Supreme Court justices was largely driven by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, working with Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn. Trump had relatively little to do with it beyond ratifying the ultimate selections.

McConnell and McGahn looked for justices in their ideological image, not Trump’s.

By contrast, George H.W. Bush chose Thomas without knowing much about him. He wanted a Black jurist to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, and he didn’t have a lot of Black Republican judges to choose from. The full scope of the new justice’s ideology was unknown when he was named.

Alito was more of a known commodity when George W. Bush appointed him, but he wasn’t the president’s first choice. Bush had tried to put his counsel, Harriet Miers, on the court. But he had to withdraw Miers’ name after intense opposition from the right. The choice of Alito was an effort at political damage control.

But McConnell won’t be Senate Republican leader after this year — he’s already announced his plans to step down. And Trump isn’t likely to appoint anyone to the White House staff like McGahn, who repeatedly thwarted him on key issues.

Trump owes his political survival to the steadfast support of the right wing, especially conservative, evangelical Christians. Whatever constraints the former GOP establishment managed to impose on him before would be largely absent in a second term.

Hence the main lesson from Tuesday: The high court has moved sharply to the right already, but it could go a lot further if Trump gets another term.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The nationwide poll conducted in mid-March by Florida Atlantic University found 73% of voters agree that “Democracy may have problems, but it is the best system of government,” including 50% who strongly agree. Just 13% disagree.

But the youngest group of voters, those from 18 to 35, felt much differently.

Slightly more than half — 53% — agreed it’s the best system of government. Just 15% strongly agree while a quarter — 25% — disagreed.

That’s a significant difference — a pro-democracy advantage among all voters of 60 percentage points, compared to just 28 points among younger voters.

The finding merits further study, and warrants concern, said Kevin Wagner, an FAU political scientist and authority on public opinion polling.

The FAU poll also found the views of the youngest group of voters are dramatically different than the oldest.

Among voters 65 and older, 89% agree (including 73% who strongly agree) and just 6% disagree with the pro-democracy statement. That’s an 83-point pro-democracy advantage.

“The distinction between younger voters and older voters is very stark,” Wagner said, adding it suggests that “among younger voters there is a loss of faith in the system and the process. That should cause us to ask why younger voters feel the democratic system is not working for them?”

Wagner said the thing that keeps jumping out to him from the poll results was the results among younger voters. “If that’s not concerning, we’re not paying attention.”

The youngest voters were also far more likely to express ambivalence when asked if they agree that democracy is the best system of government.

Among all voters, 14% said they didn’t agree or disagree.

Among those 18-34, 25% said they didn’t agree or disagree; among those 65 and older, just 4% didn’t feel either way.

Political differences

The poll results also revealed political differences in response to the democracy statement.

People who said they plan to vote for former President Donald Trump, the presumed Republican nominee, in November were 22 percentage points less likely to agree that democracy is the best system of government than people who said they plan to vote for President Joe Biden.

Among Biden voters, 85% agree democracy is the best form of government even though it may have problems, 6% disagree, and 10% don’t agree or disagree.

Among Trump voters, 63% agree, 18% disagree, 19% don’t agree or disagree.

That’s a 79-point pro-democracy advantage among Biden supporters and a 44-point advantage among Trump supporters.

When the question is examined by party affiliation of those surveyed — as opposed to those who’ve decided between Biden and Trump — the differences aren’t as pronounced.

Among Democrats: 79% agree, 8% disagree, and 13% don’t agree or disagree.

Among Republicans: 69% agree, 17% disagree, and 13% said neither.

Among independents: 67% agree, 15% disagree, and 19% said neither.

Wagner said the larger share of Republicans than Democrats who disagree may stem from Trump, who has “has suggested he thinks the system is not fair. And I think that’s reflected a bit in the Republican vote.”

Income, gender

There were some other demographic differences, but they weren’t nearly as significant as the difference between the youngest and oldest voters or among Biden and Trump voters.

People with higher incomes were more likely to agree that democracy is the best than people who earn less.

Among voters making $50,000 a year or less: 68% agree, 16% disagree, 17% don’t agree or disagree.

Among those making $100,000 or more: 82% agree, 12% disagree, 6% don’t agree or disagree.

The difference in outlook according to earnings isn’t surprising, Wagner said. “If you’re wealthy, it’s pretty easy to say the system is working for you.”

Polling often shows differences in outlooks between men and women. But the FAU poll didn’t find meaningful differences on the democracy question.

Among men: 77% agree with the democracy-is-best statement, 12% disagree, 11%  don’t agree or disagree.

Among women: 69% agree, 15% disagree, 17% don’t agree or disagree.

How well it works

FAU researchers asked a related question about “how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the way democracy works in the United States?”

After years of claims by Trump and his supporters that the 2020 presidential election was rigged — an assertion for which repeated investigations have found no evidence — there are higher levels of dissatisfaction among the former president’s supporters.

A total of 46% of voters surveyed said they were satisfied with the way democracy works in the U.S.

Among people age 18-34, it was 36%; for 65 and older voters, 54%; Biden voters, 63%; Trump voters, 33%.

Among all voters, 39% said they were dissatisfied with the way democracy works in the U.S. Among those ages 18-34, 39%; 65 and older, 36%; Biden voters, 23%; Trump voters, 51%.

And 15% of all voters said they weren’t satisfied or dissatisfied. Among those ages 18-34, 25%; 65 and older, 11%; Biden voters, 14%; and Trump voters, 16%.

Takeaways

Overall, Wagner noted, there is still broad support for democracy.

“Most Americans do have faith in democracy, and I think considering all the negativity that we hear, that’s actually a pretty good finding,” Wagner said.

Even though “a good number of people are currently dissatisfied with how our government is operating,” Wagner said “people like democracy and maybe are a little more frustrated with how democracy operates in the United States.”

Wagner said too many people think that younger voters, if they turn out, will automatically vote for Democrats.

“Many people are missing the fact that younger voters are actually pretty upset about the state of our political universe,” and that could lead to some upended assumptions — including the possibility that their voting patterns may not line up with widespread expectations.

One result might be more support from younger voters or independent, third-party candidates, or for Trump, he said.

Fine print

The poll of 1,053 registered voters was conducted March 15-17 by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, which is a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science.

The survey used text messages to reach registered voters who responded to a link to complete the survey online and used automated phone calls to reach other voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey of Democrats, Republicans and independents. The margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats, or men and women, is higher because the sample sizes are smaller.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Facebook, Threads.net and Post.news.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voting ends Saturday in North Dakota’s Democratic presidential primary, with President Joe Biden looking to add the state’s handful of delegates to his insurmountable lead for his party’s nomination. The party-run contest rounds out the busiest month of voting on the presidential primary calendar, with 30 states plus the District of Columbia and several U.S. territories holding primaries and caucuses in the last 30 days.

The primary was conducted mostly by mail, from Feb. 20 through Saturday at noon CT. Ballots received after that time will not be counted. Voters may hand-deliver their mail ballots to the state party’s centralized drop-off point in Fargo but must call ahead to make sure a party staff member is available to receive them. A very limited amount of in-person voting was held March 22-24 at a different location each day to accommodate residents of Native American reservations.

In 2020, Biden lost North Dakota’s Democratic caucuses, which functioned like a small-scale, in-person primary. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont won the state with 53% of the vote, to 40% for Biden. The March 10 contest was one of the last primaries or caucuses held before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted several states to postpone their elections.

This time around, Biden is poised to win his first election in North Dakota against seven other candidates who collectively have not made much of an impact at the ballot box this season. The state party had originally planned to use ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference, but it was forced to scrap the idea when the Democratic National Committee rejected the proposal. Now, the primary will use traditional vote-counting methods: Voters vote for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

North Dakota Republicans held presidential caucuses on March 4. Former President Donald Trump handily won that contest on the eve of Super Tuesday with 84% of the vote, to 14% for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Biden and Trump won enough delegates to unofficially lock up their parties’ nominations on March 12.

Trump carried the state in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, with 63% and 65% of the vote, respectively.

Here’s a look at what to expect on Saturday:

PRIMARY DAY

North Dakota’s party-run Democratic presidential primary will conclude Saturday. Mail ballots must be received by Saturday at noon CT, which is 1 p.m. EST.

WHAT’S ON THE BALLOT

The Associated Press will provide coverage for the Democratic presidential primary. The ballot lists Biden, Jason Palmer, Marianne Williamson, former candidate Dean Phillips and four others. There is no Republican presidential contest on Saturday.

WHO GETS TO VOTE

Any person qualified to vote in North Dakota in the November general election may participate in the party-run primary, with two conditions: They must complete a form declaring themselves as Democrats, and they may not have participated in the North Dakota Republican presidential caucuses on March 4. There is no voter registration system in North Dakota.

DELEGATE ALLOCATION RULES

There are 13 pledged Democratic delegates at stake in North Dakota. Three at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are two PLEO delegates, or “party leaders and elected officials.” Eight delegates are designated as district-level delegates, but since North Dakota has only one congressional district, they also are awarded according to the statewide vote. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any delegates.

DECISION NOTES

The state party is expected to release one vote update after polls close with complete vote results. The Associated Press will make a winner call based on the state party’s announcement.

WHAT DO TURNOUT AND ADVANCE VOTE LOOK LIKE

The primary is mostly conducted by mail, with very limited in-person voting.

Saturday’s primary marks the first time the North Dakota Democratic Party has held an event of this type, so there isn’t a similar recent event to make an apples-to-apples comparison for turnout purposes. However, there were 14,413 votes cast in the party’s 2020 presidential caucuses, which functioned like an in-person party-run primary.

HOW LONG DOES VOTE COUNTING USUALLY TAKE?

The state party says it expects to provide an update of final vote results on Saturday evening or by Sunday evening if the vote-counting process takes longer than expected. The final vote certification deadline is Tuesday.

ARE WE THERE YET?

As of Saturday, there will be 142 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and 220 days until the November general election.

Robert Yoon is an elections and democracy reporter for The Associated Press, with a focus on analyzing vote and demographic data and explaining the intricacies of the electoral process. He is now covering his seventh presidential campaign cycle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are more worried about legal immigrants committing crimes in the U.S. than they were a few years ago, a change driven largely by increased concern among Republicans, while Democrats continue to see a broad range of benefits from immigration, a new poll shows.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that substantial shares of U.S. adults believe that immigrants contribute to the country’s economic growth, and offer important contributions to American culture. But when it comes to legal immigrants, U.S. adults see fewer major benefits than they did in the past, and more major risks.

About 4 in 10 Americans say that when immigrants come to the U.S. legally, it’s a major benefit for American companies to get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology. A similar share (38%) also say that legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture and values.

Both those figures were down compared with 2017, when 59% of Americans said skilled immigrant workers who enter the country legally were a major benefit, and half said legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans who say that there’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S. has increased, going from 19% in 2017 to 32% in the new poll.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say that immigration is an important issue for them personally, and 41% now say it’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S., up from 20% in 2017. Overall, Republicans are more likely to see major risks — and fewer benefits — from immigrants who enter the country legally and illegally, although they tend to be most concerned about people who come to the country illegally.

Bob Saunders is a 64-year-old independent from Voorhees, New Jersey. He disapproves of President Joe Biden’s performance when it comes to immigration and border security and is particularly worried about the number of immigrants coming to the southern border who are eventually released into the country. He stressed that there’s a difference between legal and illegal immigration. Saunders said it’s important to know the background of the immigrants coming to the U.S. and said legal immigration contributes to the economy. He also noted the immigrants in his own family.

“It’s not anti-immigration,” Saunders said. “It’s anti-illegal immigration.”

Many Republicans, 71%, say there’s a risk of people in the country illegally coming to the U.S. and committing crimes , although many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. Even more, 80%, think there’s a major risk that people in the country without permission will burden public service programs, while about 6 in 10 Republicans are concerned that there’s a major risk of them taking American jobs, that their population growth will weaken American identity or that they will vote illegally — although only a small number of noncitizen voters have been uncovered.

Amber Pierce, a 43-year-old Republican from Milam, Texas, says she understands that a lot of migrants are seeking a better life for their children, but she’s also concerned migrants will become a drain on government services.

“I believe that a lot of them come over here and get free health care and take away from the people who have worked here and are citizens,” Pierce said. “They get a free ride. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to see benefits from immigration, although the poll did find that only half of Democrats now think that legal immigrants are making important contributions to American companies, a decrease of more than 20 percentage points from 2017. But they’re more likely than Republicans to say that the ability of people to come from other places in the world to escape violence or find economic opportunities is extremely or very important to the U.S’s identity as a nation.

“People who are coming, are coming for good reason. It’s how many of us got here,” said Amy Wozniak, a Democrat from Greenwood, Indiana. Wozniak said previous waves of immigrants came from European countries. Now immigrants are coming from different countries but that doesn’t meant they’re not fleeing for justifiable reasons, she said: “They’re not all drugs and thugs.”

U.S. adults — and especially Republicans — are more likely to say that the country has been significantly changed by immigrants in the past five years than they are to say that immigrants have changed their own community or their state. About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say immigrants have had a major impact on their local community while about 6 in 10 say they’ve had a major impact on the country as a whole. The gap between perceptions of community impact and effects on the country as a whole is particularly wide among Republicans.

There is some bipartisan agreement about how immigration at the border between the U.S. and Mexico should be addressed. The most popular option asked about is hiring more Border Patrol agents, which is supported by about 8 in 10 Republicans and about half of Democrats. Hiring more immigration judges and court personnel is also favored among majorities of both parties.

About half of Americans support reducing the number of immigrants who are allowed to seek asylum in the U.S. when they arrive at the border, but there’s a much bigger partisan divide there, with more Republicans than Democrats favoring this strategy. Building a wall — former President Donald Trump’s signature policy goal — is the least popular and most polarizing option of the four asked about. About 4 in 10 favor building a wall, including 77% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.

Donna Lyon is a Democratic-leaning independent from Cortland, New York. She believes a border wall would do little to stop migrants. But she supports hiring more Border Patrol agents and more immigration court judges to deal with the growing backlog of immigration court cases: “That would stop all the backup that we have.”

Congress just recently approved money to hire about 2,000 more Border Patrol agents but so far this year, there’s been no significant boost for funding for more immigration judges. Many on both sides of the aisle have said it takes much too long to decide asylum cases, meaning migrants stay in the country for years waiting for a decision, but the parties have failed to find consensus on how to address the issue.

The poll of 1,282 adults was conducted March 21-25, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Before Biden was even joined on stage Thursday evening in New York by his Democratic forerunners in front of 5,000 paid attendees, with a sold out show and second row seats going for $500,000 a piece the campaign was apparently able to pull in an eye-popping $25 million for just the one event.

“This historic raise is a show of strong enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice President Harris and a testament to the unprecedented fundraising machine we’ve built,” Biden-Harris 2024 campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg said.

The evening event, hosted by comedian Mindy Kaling and featuring musical guests Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, and Lea Michele, was billed as an “armchair conversation with the three presidents, moderated by none other than Late Night’s Stephen Colbert.”

Tickets went for a range of prices, starting as low as $225 and going up to half-a-million. The most expensive tickets came with a chance to join the current and former presidents for a photo.

Biden’s campaign took the opportunity to point out they were continuing a “trend of Team Biden-Harris absolutely lapping the Trump campaign in fundraising.”

“The Trump campaign raised $20 million in February, comically less than half the $53 million Team Biden-Harris raised in February. Today, the Trump campaign has less than $42 million cash on hand, which is less than one-third of the $155 million cash on hand that Team Biden-Harris has,” Biden’s campaign said in a statement, citing figures provided by the Federal Elections Commission.

The campaign, according to staffers, was able to raise more ahead of Thursday’s event than Trump managed through the entire month of February.

“​Trump is ‘scrambling’ to raise cash as he lags behind President Biden in fundraising. Instead of closing the gap to fund his campaign, he is fundraising to pay his legal bills and relying on donors to finance his bond,” Biden’s campaign said.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said that the fact Biden is leaning on the former presidents for campaign energy is telling, despite how much money they may bring in.

“Crooked Joe is so mentally deficient that he needs to trot out some retreads like Clinton and Obama,” he said.

Herald wire services contributed.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris looked up from prepared remarks in the White House’s ornate Roosevelt Room this month to make sure the reporters in the room could hear her clearly: “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”

Harris’ “marijuana reform roundtable” was a striking reminder of how the politics have shifted for a onetime prosecutor raised in the “Just Say No” era of zero-tolerance drug enforcement. As President Biden seeks badly needed support from young people, his administration is banking on cannabis policy as a potential draw.

Biden made similar comments to Harris’ in this month’s State of the Union address — though the 81-year-old president used the term “marijuana” instead of “weed.” The administration is highlighting its decision to grant clemency for pot possession as it races to have cannabis reclassified under the Controlled Substances Act before Biden faces voters in November.

“What’s good about this issue is it’s clean and it’s clear and it cuts through,” said Celinda Lake, one of Biden’s 2020 pollsters who also works for the Coalition for Cannabis Scheduling Reform, an industry group, along with Democratic organizations supporting Biden’s reelection. “And it’s hard to get voters’ attention in this cynical environment.”

The challenge is significant. Biden is viewed favorably by only 31% of people ages 18 through 29, much worse than he fares with other age groups, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll. Though he leads former President Trump by 21 percentage points in that age group, he needs a high turnout to repeat his 2020 formula. Biden’s age probably has played a role in alienating a group that is both essential for Democrats and historically harder to galvanize than older voters, who more consistently show up at the polls.

What’s more, the biggest step Biden is taking is incremental and not in his full control. The president wants regulators to move marijuana from a Schedule I classification under the Controlled Substances Act — the most restrictive category of drugs that also includes heroin — to Schedule III, a still highly regulated group of drugs that includes anabolic steroids.

That decision is now under review by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has historically resisted looser drug laws and usually taken many years to review such rule changes within the law, which has been in effect since 1971.

Even if the DEA agrees, it will not mean marijuana is legal at the national level, something that frustrates some cannabis advocates.

“In the year 2024, it’s fair to expect more from a Democratic president,” said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a nonprofit trying to loosen laws at the local, state and federal levels.

Schweich said he worries about Trump returning to office but believes Biden has done the “absolute bare minimum,” missing a political opportunity to push for legalization in Congress and to advocate for the complete removal of marijuana from the controlled substances list, which Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and 11 other Democratic senators urged in a January letter to the DEA.

Trump, whose administration threatened federal enforcement against localities and states that had legalized marijuana, is unlikely to attract support from legalization advocates.

Polling that Lake has done for the industry shows even the incremental step Biden is seeking could boost his approval by as much as 9 percentage points with younger voters in battleground states. But it’s hardly certain how that would play out.

A campaign aide, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said marijuana policy is one of a number of issues the campaign believes will motivate young people — important but not as prominent as top-tier concerns including college affordability, reproductive rights, the economy, climate and healthcare.

The campaign cautions against treating young people as a monolith, noting that they care about a variety of issues and tend to see connections between them. Democrats, through a variety of methods including social media influencers and a newly launched campus outreach program, are trying to make the broader case to young people that Biden is fighting for equity and change while Trump is looking backward.

They note that young voters proved critical not only in Biden’s 2020 election but also in the 2022 midterm elections, when concerns over democracy and abortion rights helped the party perform better than expected.

The administration has pitched its marijuana agenda as part of its broader efforts to change other criminal sentencing laws and to improve job and business opportunities for people who have spent time in jail or prison.

Lake argues the two efforts combined could help Biden with Black men, another group where he has lost significant support since winning election in 2020.

Padilla said he still gets asked about marijuana regulations regularly, even though California was the first state to pass a medical-use law in 1996. “It resonates with a lot of people,” he said.

In practical terms, reclassifying marijuana changes little. Federal penalties would remain the same, though the Justice Department has for decades treated most marijuana crimes as low-priority prosecutions. It would remain illegal to transport pot across state lines, meaning access to banks and financial markets will remain a hurdle, even for companies operating in states that have legalized pot.

The biggest difference is that scientists and doctors could more easily study the drug for medical uses, something that is now practically banned. Such a change could open the door for greater acceptance. It also would lower tax burdens for the industry in states where it is legal, by allowing deductions for ordinary business expenses that are currently prohibited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Other potential changes are less certain. Banks and credit card issuers, for instance, would not immediately lift restrictions on marijuana transactions, though that could come if regulators in the Treasury Department decide to take up the issue, according to Shane Pennington, an attorney specializing in the Controlled Substances Act who has industry clients.

Biden proposed reviewing marijuana’s status in October 2022, a process that usually takes an average of more than nine years, Pennington said. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended Schedule III in August, the first step toward a change. A DEA spokesperson, in an email, said the agency would not discuss the issue while it is under review.

“It often takes a very long time, but we’re in unprecedented territory here” because the order came directly from the president, Pennington said.

Harris, in her roundtable discussion on marjuana reform, showed her impatience.

“I cannot emphasize enough that they need to get to it as quickly as possible, and we need to have a resolution based on their findings and their assessment,” she said.

The rushed nature of the process could expose the administration’s actions — which are almost certain to draw lawsuits — to further scrutiny.

Kevin A. Sabet, a former marijuana policy advisor in the Obama administration who heads an anti-legalization group, noted that Biden’s Health and Human Services Department released its preliminary recommendation at 4:20 p.m., slang for weed smoking time, underscoring the political nature of a normally button-down regulatory process. He argued that the decision was poorly crafted and could run afoul of U.S. treaty obligations.

But Sabet also agrees with advocates that Biden could have gone further.

“I think what the president wants to do is reap some of the benefits of the guy who’s embracing all this stuff without actually becoming in favor of legalization,” said Sabet, who heads the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

NEW YORK (AP) — When No Labels’ critics got the loudest, it was Joe Lieberman who came to the group’s defense.

The former Connecticut senator was a founding chairman of the centrist organization that focused, above all, on promoting bipartisanship in national politics. Despite its benign stated mission, No Labels inflamed many people across politics by working to recruit a third-party presidential candidate that some fear might tilt the 2024 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

At almost every major turn, Lieberman served as the group’s chief public defender. He was also a private force in No Labels’ presidential recruitment push. He insisted repeatedly in interviews, as recently as last week, that the nation is craving an alternative to Trump and President Joe Biden.

“This is the moment for a bipartisan unity ticket,” Lieberman told Bloomberg Television last Thursday. “Now, we’ve just got to find a strong bipartisan ticket to recommend to the No Labels delegates in the next couple of weeks. That’s not easy.”

Now, Lieberman is gone. He died on Wednesday due to complications from a fall. He was 82.

Lieberman’s death not only marks an irreplaceable loss for No Labels, it injects a new level of uncertainty into the organization’s 2024 ambitions.

Just hours before news of his death was reported this week, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who twice ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination, announced his decision not to join No Labels’ presidential ticket. It was the latest in a string of high-profile rejections for the group, which has nonetheless secured a spot on presidential ballots in more than a dozen states.

Already, No Labels had courted and been denied by would-be White House contenders in both parties including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

On Thursday, a fresh wave of critics called on No Labels to abandon its 2024 plans.

“At this point I’m not sure what else the No Labels crowd needs to hear. Every serious person who has taken a look at this gambit immediately sees they would just be helping to elect Donald Trump,” Sarah Longwell, who founded Republican Voters Against Trump, wrote on X. “Time for No Labels and its donors to pull the plug.”

No Labels’ leadership declined to address its 2024 plans on Thursday given Lieberman’s passing. His funeral was scheduled for Friday.

But new details emerged in the group’s struggle to peesuade strong candidates to join its presidential ticket.

Lieberman was intimately involved in recruitment conversations with potential candidates. He participated in introductory Zoom calls and maintained regular contact with top prospects, including Christie.

The former New Jersey governor’s team looked seriously at a potential No Labels’ bid. His advisers did polling, modeling and studied the fundraising challenges, according to a person familiar with Christie’s thinking, granted anonymity to disclose private conversations.

Ultimately, Christie determined that a No Labels’ ticket was not viable, despite the organization’s insistence to the contrary.

“While I believe this is a conversation that needs to be had with the American people, I also believe that if there is not a pathway to win and if my candidacy in any way, shape or form would help Donald Trump become president again, then it is not the way forward,” Christie said Wednesday in a statement.

Another high-profile Republican Trump critic, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, was also in regular contact with No Labels in recent months. Sununu, who briefly considered a Republican White House bid, has announced he will not seek reelection this fall.

Sensing opportunity, No Labels repeatedly reached out to Sununu and indicated that he was one of their top choices based on focus group data, according to a Sununu adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.

Sununu repeatedly told No Labels advisers that he wasn’t interested, the adviser said. No Labels reached out again in early March to gauge Sununu’s interest, and the New Hampshire governor again said no.

Still, No Labels appears to be pushing forward.

The group announced on Wednesday, just before news of Lieberman’s death emerged, that it had secured ballot access in Wyoming. That makes 19 states, including swing states Arizona and Nevada, in which No Labels says it has officially qualified for the presidential ballot.

While that’s more than third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has confirmed so far, it’s far from the number of states a candidate will need to have a legitimate chance to win the presidency.

He wrote that he was part of a No Labels committee dubbed, “Country Over Party,” which was in charge of identifying candidates for the unity ticket.

“If we find two candidates that meet our high threshold, we will recommend that ticket to No Labels’ delegates for a nomination vote at a National Nominating Convention that will be held later this spring,” Lieberman said just two weeks ago. “If No Labels is unable to find candidates who meet this high threshold, then we simply will not offer our ballot line to anyone.”

“We remain undeterred and confident in our mission,” Lieberman continued, “because we know we have America’s vast commonsense majority behind us.”

Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Jill Colvin in New York contributed.

ATLANTA (AP) — The charges against Donald Trump in the Georgia election interference case seek to criminalize political speech and advocacy conduct that the First Amendment protects, a lawyer for the former president said Thursday as he argued that the indictment should be dismissed.

The hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was on a filing from Trump and on two pretrial motions by co-defendant David Shafer and centered on technical legal arguments. It marked something of a return to normalcy after the case was rocked by allegations that District Attorney Fani Willis improperly benefited from her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor hired for the case.

“There is nothing alleged factually against President Trump that is not political speech,” Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, told the judge. Sadow said a sitting president expressing concerns about an election is “the height of political speech” and that is protected even if what was said ended up being false.

Prosecutor Donald Wakeford countered that Trump’s statements are not protected by the First Amendment because they were integral to criminal activity.

“It’s not just that they were false. It’s not that the defendant has been hauled into a courtroom because the prosecution doesn’t like what he said,” Wakeford said, adding that Trump is free to express his opinion and make legitimate protests. “What he is not allowed to do is to employ his speech and his expression and his statements as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate Georgia’s RICO statute, to impersonate public officers, to file false documents, to make false statements to the government.”

Wakeford pointed out that similar arguments were raised and rejected in the federal election interference case against Trump brought by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in a December ruling that “it is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime.”

“Defendant is not being prosecuted simply for making false statements … but rather for knowingly making false statements in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy and obstructing the electoral process,” Chutkan wrote.

Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, an expansive anti-racketeering statute, to charge Trump and 18 others with allegedly participating in a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Most of the charges against Shafer, a former state Republican Party chairman, have to do with his involvement in the casting of Electoral College votes for Trump by a group of Georgia Republicans even though the state’s election had been certified in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The charges against Shafer include impersonating a public officer, forgery, false statements and writings, and attempting to file false documents.

His lawyer, Craig Gillen, argued that the activity Shafer engaged in was lawful at the time and that Schafer was acting in accordance with requirements of the Electoral Count Act. Because a legal challenge to the presidential election results was pending on Dec. 14, 2020, when it came time for electors to meet to cast Georgia’s electoral votes, Gillen said it was up to Congress to determine whether a Democratic or Republican slate of electors should be counted for the state. He said that means Shafer and the other Republicans who met to cast electoral votes were acting properly.

Gillen also asked that three phrases be struck from the indictment: “duly elected and qualified presidential electors,” “false Electoral College votes” and “lawful electoral votes.” He said those phrases are used to assert that the Democratic slate of electors was valid and the Republican slate was not. He said those are “prejudicial legal conclusions” about issues that should be decided by the judge or by the jury at trial.

Wooten opposed the move, saying “every allegation in an indictment is a legal conclusion.”

Trump and the others were indicted last year, accused of participating in a scheme to try to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, which the Republican incumbent narrowly lost to Biden.

All the defendants were charged with violating the anti-racketeering law, along with other alleged crimes. Four people charged in the case have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set. Willis has asked that the trial begin in August.

The allegations that Willis engaged in an improper relationship were explored over several days in an evidentiary hearing last month that delved into intimate details of Willis’ and Wade’s personal lives. The judge rejected defense efforts to remove Willis and her office as long as Wade stepped aside. But McAfee did give the defendants permission to seek a review of his decision from the state Court of Appeals.

Also this month, the judge dismissed six of the 41 counts in the indictment, including three against Trump, finding that prosecutors failed to provide enough detail about the alleged crimes.

Any attempt to invoke the 14th Amendment would likely trigger an outcry from voters who backed Trump, plunging the country into political turmoil.

Leaders of the party in Congress of course are now denying they’ll use the emergency tactic – a sure sign they will do it if necessary.

“We’re not election deniers,” U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said. “This is about the ballot box. So this is about democracy, and the voters get to decide.”

Democrats will never admit they are considering the fail-safe tactic to circumvent the will of the voters, but you can be sure they will not rule out any means to disqualify the former president.

“I think that it’s divisive to raise it at this point,” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

The key phrase there is “at this point.” Who knows how desperate Democrats will be if Trump wins the popular and Electoral College vote?

The Supreme Court ruling allowing Trump to stay on the ballot in Colorado and other states left it to Congress to enforce the insurrection clause.

It would take a two-thirds vote of the joint session of Congress to keep Trump out, which is why Democrats are so keen on winning as many House and Senate seats as possible this fall. With a strong majority of Congress in their pocket, Democrats may be emboldened to use the strategy to block Trump.

A lawyer from Colorado during arguments before the Supreme Court said if the court would not disqualify Trump then the question of his eligibility “could come back with a vengeance” – a reference to when Congress meets to certify the election.

Democrats could invoke their powers to refuse to certify Trump’s win based on the 14th Amendment, arguing that he led an insurrection on Jan. 6.

Section 3 of the Amendment bans current and former federal, state and military officials  who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country from holding office again.

It was that clause that triggered partisan Democrats in Colorado, Maine and other states to keep Trump off the primary ballot – an effort that failed because of the Supreme Court.

But party leaders in Congress don’t want to admit that Trump could beat Joe Biden, so for now they are dismissing disqualifying him post-election with a vote.

“Any creating expectations that there is an alternative to beating Trump at the ballot box, I think, is a source of false hope and potentially detracts from our very necessary efforts to beat him there,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal told Roll Call.

But Democratic voters may feel differently if Trump wins, and look to Congress to hit the panic button and do whatever is necessary to keep the former president from serving another term.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, was either up very late or very early Wednesday morning, when he took to his Truth Social media platform at 2 a.m. to offer his thoughts on the pseudo-scion of the once-powerful Kennedy political family.

“RFK Jr. is the most Radical Left Candidate in the race, by far. He’s a big fan of the Green New Scam, and other economy killing disasters. I guess this would mean he is going to be taking votes from Crooked Joe Biden, which would be a great service to America,” Trump wrote, capitalization his.

The only person leaning left of Kennedy in the 2024 race for the White House, according to the former president, is the Silicon Valley millionaire lawyer he’s attached to his campaign.

“His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, is even more ‘Liberal’ than him, if that’s possible. Kennedy is a Radical Left Democrat, and always will be,” Trump wrote.

As is usual for the former president, he found a way to view Kennedy’s political moves through a Trump-colored lens, suggesting his own legal predicaments mean that the son of assassinated former Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and his new running mate should have their lawyers’ contact information close at hand.

“It’s great for MAGA, but the Communists will make it very hard for him to get on the Ballot. Expect him, and her, to be indicted any day now, probably for Environmental Fraud,” Trump wrote.

Kennedy teased a White House bid as a Democrat last year but soon dropped his party affiliation in favor of an independent run at the office once held by his uncle, 35th President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Since he entered the race, it’s been rumored he was running a “spoiler” campaign aimed at taking votes away from President Joe Biden.

“He’s a spoiler. He’s tried to coast on his family legacy and the goodwill they have in the African American community,” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said of Kennedy on a conference call with reporters organized by the DNC. “But the Kennedy family has denounced this lame attempt and they’ve quite frankly stood with President Biden.”

According to Kennedy, that’s only about half right.

“Our campaign is a spoiler. I agree with that. It is a spoiler for President Biden and for President Trump,” Kennedy said Tuesday.

Polling averages show Kennedy pulls about 10% of the vote nationally in surveys that include both major party candidates and other third party contenders like Jill Stein and Cornel West. In a race with just Trump, Biden, and Kennedy, polling averages show RFK Jr. in third at 12.3%.

In both circumstances, Trump comes out on top.

“He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine. I love that he is running,” Trump wrote.

Facing increased threats to election workers and superheated political rhetoric from former President Donald Trump and his supporters, more states are considering firearm bans at polling places and ballot drop boxes ahead of November’s presidential election.

This month, New Mexico became the latest state to restrict guns where people vote or hand in ballots, joining at least 21 other states with similar laws — some banning either open or concealed carry but most banning both.

Nine of those prohibitions were enacted in the past two years, as states have sought to prevent voter intimidation or even violence at the polls driven by Trump’s false claims of election rigging. At least six states are debating bills that would ban firearms at polling places or expand existing bans to include more locations.

The New Mexico measure, which was supported entirely by Democrats, applies to within 100 feet of polling places and 50 feet of ballot drop boxes. People who violate the law are subject to a petty misdemeanor charge that could result in six months in jail.

“Our national climate is increasingly polarized,” said Democratic state Rep. Reena Szczepanski, one of the bill’s sponsors. “Anything we can do to turn the temperature down and allow for the safe operation of our very basic democratic right, voting, is critical.”

She told Stateline that she and her co-sponsors were inspired to introduce the legislation after concerned Santa Fe poll workers, who faced harassment by people openly carrying firearms during the 2020 presidential election, reached out to them.

The bill carved out an exception for people with concealed carry permits and members of law enforcement. Still, every Republican in the New Mexico legislature opposed the measure; many said they worried that gun owners might get charged with a crime for accidentally bringing their firearm to the polling place.

“We have a lot of real crime problems in this state,” said House Minority Floor Leader Ryan Lane, a Republican, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month. “It’s puzzling to me why we’re making this a priority.”

But over the past several years, national voting rights and gun violence prevention advocates have been sounding the alarm over increased threats around elections, pointing to ballooning disinformation, looser gun laws, record firearm sales and vigilantism at polling locations and ballot tabulation centers.

National surveys show that election officials have left the field in droves because of the threats they’re facing, and many who remain in their posts are concerned for their safety.

Add in aggressive rhetoric from Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and it becomes “a storm” that makes it essential for states to pass laws that prohibit guns at polling places, said Robyn Sanders, a Democracy Program counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights group based at the New York University School of Law.

“Our democracy has come under new and unnerving pressure based on the emergence of the election denial movement, disinformation and false narratives about the integrity of our elections,” said Sanders, who co-authored a September report on how to protect elections from gun violence. The report was a partnership between the Brennan Center and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“The presence of guns in these places presents a risk of violence,” she added.

Increased threat environment

Over the past four years, threats have gone beyond voicemails, emails or social media posts. Armed vigilantes have harassed voters at ballot drop boxes and shown up outside vote tabulation centers. Other people reportedly have shot at local election officials.

While several states have enacted laws in recent years criminalizing threats to election officials, some states want to take it a step further through gun restrictions.

This year, primarily Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan Pennsylvania, Vermont and Virginia have introduced legislation that would ban most firearms in or near polling places or other election-related places. Most of these bills remain in committee.

Some of the states have seen political violence in recent years, including Pennsylvania, where a man tried to go into a Harrisburg polling place in November with a firearm and acted threateningly, confronting voters and pointing an unloaded gun at an unoccupied police cruiser.

A bill in Virginia to ban firearms at polling places got through the state legislature on a party-line vote this month, but Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has not yet acted on the legislation. His press office did not respond to a request for more information.

Two Democratic-backed bills in Michigan seek to ban most firearms at or within 100 feet of polling places, and ballot drop boxes and clerks’ offices during the 40 days before an election. They have passed the state Senate but await votes in the House.

Democratic state Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou, the sponsor of one of those bills, told Stateline she expects the legislation to pass in April, after special elections fill two vacant seats.

“We want to make sure that we’re able to attract the needed election workers, and that they feel safe doing those jobs,” she said. “Sadly, we’re seeing more and more gun violence throughout our state and our nation. And I strongly believe that everyone should feel safe when they’re voting.”

But these bills are “good for headlines and nothing else,” said GOP state Sen. Jim Runestad in a statement on the Senate Republicans’ website.

“When one considers the sheer number of drop boxes placed throughout larger communities, like in the city of Detroit, these places could be nearly impossible to avoid,” he wrote, referring to gun owners.

One of his proposed amendments that failed would have exempted gun owners carrying guns for non-election-related business, such as going into a store near a ballot drop box.

In 2020, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson attempted to ban firearms within 100 feet of polling places, clerks’ offices and absentee ballot counting centers. But Michigan courts blocked her effort, finding she didn’t have the authority.

Michigan was one of many states where election officials faced violent threats during the 2020 presidential election. Last month, a man pleaded guilty to federal charges for threatening the life of former Rochester Hills Clerk Tina Barton, saying she deserved a “throat to the knife.”

There is broad bipartisan support among voters to ban firearms at polling places. According to a 2022 poll of more than 1,000 adults commissioned by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, nearly 80% of Democrats and more than half of Republicans and independents polled thought guns should be banned at polling places. Overall, 63% of adults surveyed supported a ban.

But that cross-party support has not translated to state legislatures.

Where are the bans?

Democratic-controlled states have spearheaded the effort to ban firearms at polling places in recent years, with only a handful of Republican lawmakers joining Democrats to pass the bills in some states.

In 2022, Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Washington state passed firearm restrictions at polling places. In 2023, California, Delaware, Hawaii and Maryland joined the list.

Nevada’s majority-Democratic legislature passed a similar ban last year, but Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed it. He said the measure would have infringed on the constitutional rights of Nevadans.

Maryland’s ban is facing a legal challenge from gun rights groups and activists who argue such bans infringe on Second Amendment protections and are ineffective.

“It’s a solution looking for a problem,” said Andi Turner, a spokesperson for the Maryland State Rifle and Pistol Association, which is part of the lawsuit challenging the law. “We don’t have people threatening at polling places or going and shooting up election workers. I don’t see why this needs to be a thing.”

The states that had polling place firearm bans prior to the 2020 presidential election now have Republican-controlled legislatures: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas.

Georgia’s ban dates back to 1870, and in 1874 the state Supreme Court wrote that having a firearm at a polling place “is a thing so improper in itself, so shocking to all sense of propriety, so wholly useless and full of evil, that it would be strange if the framers of the constitution have used words broad enough to give it a constitutional guarantee.”

More Republican-led states should consider firearm prohibitions at polling places, said Jessie Ojeda, the guns and democracy attorney fellow at the Giffords Law Center, and one of the co-authors of the joint Brennan and Giffords report.

Gun safety advocates such as Ojeda see an opening for these laws, even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that widened the definition of protected firearm access. While the court struck down New York’s law that prohibited firearms in public, it did leave open the potential for bans in “sensitive places,” specifically noting polling places.

“We need to take action before 2024,” said Ojeda. “We have a growing number of incidents when firearms are thankfully not being used to shoot people, but they are being used to intimidate and deter voters and election officials from doing their job.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Key Bridge crossed the Patapsco River in Baltimore’s outer harbor until early Tuesday morning, when a cargo vessel struck the bridge and sent it into the frigid waters below. As of Wednesday, authorities are still searching for six missing construction workers who are presumed dead. 

While authorities emphasized the need to focus on the recovery operation, questions have swirled about the rebuild of the Key Bridge — especially after President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said Tuesday that the federal government would “pay the entire cost of reconstructing” the bridge. 

“As much as this is a tragedy, and as much as we’re all going to be terribly inconvenienced, it’s people’s lives and jobs in Baltimore if that port stays closed for very long,” said Benjamin W. Schafer, a structural engineer who specializes in steel structures and is an engineering professor at the Johns Hopkins University.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333 in the Port of Baltimore, expressed similar sentiments Tuesday, saying the halting of ships in and out of the port will be “catastrophic” for the thousands of people employed at the port who are out of work without ship traffic. 

But even with promised federal money, which carries with it its own strings and caveats, there are many factors that need to be considered before construction of any bridge can begin, Schafer said, naming securing funding, deciding on a visual design, selecting materials and working out engineering queries as steps in the process. 

In the case of the Key Bridge collapse, clearing the river of debris will also be an obstacle. All said and done, Schafer estimated a rebuild could take as long as a decade or more. 

“The bridge originally, it seems like it was about five years from breaking ground to opening up. In 1980, when the Tampa [Bay] Sunshine Skyway bridge had a strike and was destroyed, and then rebuilt with a new cable-stayed bridge, that was seven years. I would consider those lower bounds,” he said. “I think we’re looking at seven-plus, I would guess 10 to 15 years before — I know that sounds crazy — but before we look back over and we see a bridge jumping over the harbor.”

At an online event hosted by Hopkins Wednesday morning, Schafer said he’s “lived through quite a few civil infrastructure projects, and they’re rarely less than 10 years,” adding that the price tags “never seem to be out of the hundreds of millions these days.” 

“Although I don’t think the transportation network will come back quickly, we can get the port back up,” Schafer said. 

Schafer added that the “politics of getting to the moment of building the bridge can run on much longer than the actual building of it,” a claim already hinted at by state and federal officials.

“A special thanks to President Biden who made it very very clear that he will do everything in his power to make sure that we get the help we need to deal with this challenge,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat, at a Tuesday news conference. “But as Secretary [Pete] Buttigieg told us in our briefings, he’s going to need the help of Congress to get things done.” 

Congress moving quickly on a rebuild isn’t out of the question, though Biden often finds himself at odds with the thin Republican majority in the U.S. House. In 2007, the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, killing 13 and injuring nearly 150 people. Just a few days later, Congress approved a quarter of a billion dollars to go towards rebuilding the bridge. 

Buttigieg, the federal secretary of transportation, said his department stands ready to “approve emergency funding as soon as we receive that request.” 

“This is no ordinary bridge. This is one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure,” Buttigieg said. “So the path to normalcy will not be easy, it will not be quick, it will not be inexpensive, but we will rebuild together.” 

From Annapolis, Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat representing Baltimore City, said he was “very pleased” Biden committed federal dollars to the reconstruction efforts. The halting of vessel traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore is likely to disrupt shipping and supply chains while the port stands to lose an estimated $15 million a day in economic activity.

Ferguson said there will be an investigation into how the collision occurred, followed by salvaging efforts. Rebuilding can’t start until after that.

“I think when we rebuild, we should rebuild for the 22nd century,” Ferguson said. “This was a 50-year-old bridge. We should assume that when we rebuild, it’s rebuilding for the next 50 to 75 years.” 

Abieyuwa Aghayere, an engineering professor at Drexel University, said safety, cost and sustainability are major factors considered in the construction of bridges. Aghayere, who teaches a course dedicated to finding out why certain structures fail and will incorporate the Key Bridge collapse into his lesson plan, said rebuilds must aim to “remove the vulnerability that may have been there.”

“You don’t want to repeat the same mistakes,” he said. 

But even with safety top of mind, Aghayere thinks the rebuild could be accomplished quickly, especially if promised federal funds come through. 

“Because of the importance of 695 … I can see it being done within one to two years,” Aghayere said, adding that it can be difficult to estimate. “If all hands are on deck, I think it can be done.”

Cable-stayed bridges are now popular and a style that might work in the area where the Key Bridge collapsed, Aghayere said, adding that having bridge supports spaced farther away from each other would allow for a wider opening for ships to navigate. 

A newly built Key Bridge might also likely include sensors to monitor its structural health, like those implemented on Delaware’s Indian River Inlet bridge completed in 2012, said Nii Attoh-Okine, the civil and environmental engineering chair at the University of Maryland.

“This is a very, very important bridge, not only for Baltimore, not only for Maryland, but for the eastern corridor,” he said. “It’s part of the supply chain.”

Rachel Sangree, an associate teaching professor at Hopkins in the engineering department and a former bridge inspector, noted that a future bridge will likely need to provide a route for handling hazardous materials, which can’t travel through tunnels, as the former bridge did. 

“The Key Bridge was very, very tall, so whatever is selected, it will have to accommodate not only these existing sizes of the shipping vessels, but also larger sizes, because we don’t want to design exactly for what we’re seeing right now,” Sangree said. “We always need to be thinking ahead.” 

The Key Bridge was one of the city’s skyline landmarks, which also comes with its own set of design priorities, Schafer said. 

“It means something to Baltimoreans, and to the region,” he said. “And so I don’t think a simple, utilitarian bridge would necessarily be built back. I think they’ll think about what they’re creating, and its aesthetics.”

Baltimore Sun reporters Hannah Gaskill, Jonathan M. Pitts and Dillon Mullan contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The case against Donald Trump seemed relatively straightforward in August 2022 when FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago estate, with authorities citing evidence that the former president hoarded enough classified documents to fill dozens of boxes and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

But nine months after he was indicted, there are mounting doubts that the case can reach trial this year.

The Trump-appointed judge in the case has yet to set a firm trial date despite holding two hours-long hearings with lawyers this month. Multiple motions to dismiss the case are still pending, disputes over classified evidence have spanned months and a bitterly contested defense request to disclose the names of government witnesses remains unresolved. Complicating matters further is a recent order suggesting that the judge, Aileen Cannon, is still entertaining a Trump team claim about his rightful possession of the documents that she had appeared openly skeptical of days earlier.

“This does seem to be moving more slowly and less sequentially than other cases that I have seen” concerning classified information, said David Aaron, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor.

To a certain extent, the delays are the product of a broader Trump team strategy to postpone the four criminal cases confronting the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential race. But the case in Florida is unique because of the startlingly few substantive decisions that have been made to move closer to a trial. That raises the prospect that a resolution in the case may be unlikely before this year’s presidential election. If he were to win the White House, Trump could appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the federal charges against him in Florida and other jurisdictions.

Prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team have strenuously fought to press the case forward. Though they’ve taken care not to mention the upcoming election, they’ve repeatedly cited a public interest in getting the case resolved quickly and have pointed to what they say is overwhelming evidence — including surveillance video, a defense lawyer’s notes and testimony from close associates — establishing Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“This case should be over already,” said Jeffrey Swartz, a professor at Cooley Law School and former judge in Florida. “There was nothing in this case that complex.”

That’s what distinguishes the classified documents case from the other — more legally intricate — criminal cases against Trump, which revolve around everything from allegations of hush money paid to a porn actress to complex racketeering charges and his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

But defense lawyers see it differently, and Cannon — a former federal prosecutor who was appointed to the bench in 2020 and has limited trial experience as a judge — has proved receptive to some of their arguments since even before the case was filed last June.

The judge first made headlines weeks after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago when, responding to a Trump lawsuit seeking to recover the seized documents from the federal government, she appointed an independent arbiter to sift through all the records. That appointment was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel, which said Cannon had overstepped her bounds.

“My sense of it is, when she did get reversed by the 11th Circuit that made her gun-shy, so she’s gone at a very slow pace” and issued “very few public, written decisions about important issues,” said John Fishwick, Jr., a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia.

Soon after Trump was charged, Cannon set the case for trial on May 20, 2024. But last fall she signaled she would reconsider that date during a March 1 hearing. The hearing took place as scheduled — but no replacement date was picked, even though both sides operating on the assumption that the May 20 date is moot have suggested the trial could begin this summer.

That’s not the only unresolved question. Defense lawyers have filed about a half-dozen motions to dismiss the case, including on grounds that the prosecution is vindictive and that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was illegal.

Cannon this month heard hours of arguments on two of the dismissal motions — whether Trump was entitled under a statute known as the Presidential Records Act to retain the classified documents after he left office and whether the Espionage Act law at the heart of the case was so vague as to be unconstitutional.

Cannon appeared skeptical of the defense assertions and, after the hearing, issued a terse two-page order rejecting the vagueness argument while permitting Trump to raise it again later.

She has not yet acted on the Presidential Records Act motion, but legal experts noted her direction last week to lawyers for both sides to weigh in on proposed jury instructions that appeared to tilt in Trump’s favor. She asked them to respond to a premise that said in part: “A president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such a categorization decision.”

That wording was notable because it echoes arguments Trump’s lawyers have been making for months. They insist that law allowed him to designate the records he was charged with retaining as his own personal files. Smith’s team, by contrast, says the law has no relevance in a case concerning illegal possession of top-secret information, including nuclear secrets.

“It seems a little early in the game to be talking about jury instructions when there are substantial questions of law that have been raised that need to be resolved,” said Aaron, though he said the jury instructions order could be a way to tee up those resolved questions.

Besides the pending motions to dismiss, Cannon has yet to rule on a defense motion seeking to compel prosecutors to turn over a raft of information they insist would show that President Joe Biden’s administration had “weaponized” the criminal justice system in bringing the Trump case.

That assertion is in keeping with campaign-trail claims by Trump and his allies that he’s a victim of political persecution by the Biden Justice Department. He’s complained that he was charged when Biden, who was also investigated for retaining classified information, was not — prompting Smith’s team to lay out the abundant differences in the investigations.

An even more contentious dispute centers around a defense request to file on the public docket a motion that would identify potential prosecution witnesses. Cannon initially consented to the filing but paused her order after prosecutors argued that such a disclosure could jeopardize the safety of the witnesses.

“It may be that the judge is just afraid of making a mistake, but delaying it just puts it off,” said Kevin McMunigal, a Case Western Reserve University law professor. “Eventually she’s going to have to make a decision about these.”